


Full Spectrum

by languageintostillair



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Shades of Grey - Jasper Fforde
Genre: (a quirky one with a dark underbelly and set in an indeterminate time period), Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Marriage of Convenience, Strangers to Lovers, but also somehow neither of those things?, no twincest because this would end up being even longer if I had to deal with that baggage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:40:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25766848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/languageintostillair/pseuds/languageintostillair
Summary: When Brienne Tarth took her Colour Perception Test at age twenty, she never expected to receive a result of eighty-six percent Blue. It should have been a blessing: the higher your perception, the easier your path is in life, whether you are one of the ruling Purples, or Blue like her, or Green, Yellow, Orange, or Red. The higher your place in the Chromatic Hierarchy, the more likely you are to inherit a title, the better your marriage prospects. The further away you are from the lowest Greys, who can see barely any natural colour, or none at all.But even now, more than two years later, she still has no clue how she feels about that result. She has no clue how to feel about the fact that she is awkward, and ugly, and stands head and shoulders above most people, and has a high enough perception for prospective husbands to overlook all of those things.Prospective, Purple-hued husbands like Jaime Lannister.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 264
Kudos: 379
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020





	1. Rose-Coloured Glasses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CapturedMoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CapturedMoon/gifts).



> This story was written in response to this brilliant prompt: **Color. Colors are very defined and important in the world of ASoIaF, and especially for Brienne and Jaime. Sapphire and emerald, Lannister Red and Gold and Tarth Blue and Pink~~~What if the world were to lose its sense of seeing color? It is said there is an island where a girl possesses the last pair of colored eyes.**
> 
> When I first read this prompt, I immediately thought of Jasper Fforde’s 2009 dystopian novel _Shades of Grey_ (not to be confused with… the other book). Set in the UK a few hundred years after the apocalypse, the events of the book play out in a society called Chromatacia, in which the social hierarchy is defined by the ability to see colour, limited to varying degrees of one or two hues. Rather than adhering so closely to the plot of the novel, I cherry-picked elements that would work for this fic, fusing them into my own twist on Westeros. Some I stole entirely, some I adapted, some I took in a completely different direction, and some I just plain invented. All this means is, my take on dystopian fiction isn’t gonna be that deep—it just allows me to set up some, uh, unique circumstances for these two idiots to fall in love.
> 
> Last note: the chronological setting of this story is deliberately odd. Parts of it will feel like canon, the dialogue will be more modern, technology is… a mixed bag, but mostly 19th Century or early 20th Century, but with ravens? And the fashion, where mentioned, leans towards 1940s/50s… sort of. JUST ROLL WITH IT.

Eighty-six percent Blue.

That was the result she’d received upon completing her Colour Perception Test.

At the time, Brienne Tarth hadn’t known whether to consider it a blessing. Others do—the higher your perception, the easier your path is in life, whether you are one of the ruling Purples, or Blue like her, or Green, Yellow, Orange, or Red. The higher your place in the Chromatic Hierarchy, the more likely you are to inherit a title, the better your marriage prospects.

The further away you are from the lowest Greys, who can see barely any natural colour, or none at all.

But even now, more than two years after she’d made the journey to Storm’s End for testing, she still has no clue how she feels about that result.

Eighty-six percent Blue. A value that defines her entire existence.

It wasn’t that the result was entirely unexpected. She’d always had the inkling that she could see a _reasonable_ amount of blue. When she looks at the sea surrounding Tarth, she can tell that its shade is much deeper than the sky stretching above the horizon. She has adjectives like ‘intense’ and ‘vivid’ and ‘striking’ at her disposal, but there is an emptiness in them she can’t quite explain. The colour of the waters calls to her, _sings_ even, and she decided long ago that this resonance can’t be put in words. It can’t even be put into _colour_ —there are Synthetic Sapphire Blue swatches painted on information plaques across the island, to show any non-Blue visitors exactly why Tarth is called the Sapphire Isle, but she’s always thought that a poor simulation. She supposes that there’s only so much that can be achieved with Synthetic Colour, when so many of the two thousand available shades are too rare to be in common circulation. Artificiality is the price to pay for colour egalitarianism.

The limitations of Synthetic Colour make her glad for one more thing—that her vision allows her to see the subtle changes in the grass, the leaves on the trees. She can only see the blue parts of all these green things, but she is still grateful for that. Tarth can’t afford to maintain something so extravagant as a Colour Garden—ironic, considering their port accepts shipments of scrap colour from Essos, and sends that on to the mainland for recycling into raw pigment—so she’d visited one only a few times in her life. She’s always wondered if the Synthetic greens that are systematically pumped into their grounds resemble the true greens of the plants at all. She’s never been friendly enough with a Green to ask, but she suspects the answer is no.

Anyway. She’d _known_ she could see all that blue. She just never knew she could see quite that _much_. Custom dictated that one should keep even the hints of one’s perception to oneself, at least before you took the Test at age twenty. Maybe if her brother Galladon had lived, she could have discussed it with him. But he hadn’t, and she’d had no other peers. She is Brienne Tarth, the only surviving child of Lord Selwyn Tarth, and the only noble Blue of her generation who lives on the island permanently. She has been awkward and ugly since she could understand what it means to be awkward and ugly, and she’s stood head and shoulders above all the other children from the age of six. Members of the other noble houses—other high-hued Blues, and Greens, and Yellows, and Oranges, and Reds—would visit from time to time, and still do, as do the Purples from a couple of the Great Houses. But they never stay more than a couple of weeks—there is little on the isle to entertain, even if you can see blue or green—and very few have been kind to her.

There are the Greys, of course. But she couldn’t call any of them friends, though she’s worked alongside them since she was young, and would characterise their relations as ‘harmonious’. Socialising between the hued and the non-hued is discouraged, even if there is no such rule in The Seven-Coloured Wheel. It’s just one of those Unwritten Things, for all the rules that _are_ written in The Wheel that govern their lives here in the Seven Kingdoms.

At first, her Test result had seemed inconsequential. As the daughter of the Lord of Tarth, she would inherit the title of Evenstar in due time, except in the highly unlikely event that some distant Blue relation scored higher than her on their Test. An eighty-six percent perception only cemented the path she’d already known was hers. Perhaps others might covet being head of their house—particularly head of a Great House, which grants you a position on the ruling Ultraviolet Council—but to Brienne, the title of Evenstar symbolises nothing more than her duties to her family and her home. Duties that take the form of work, both manual and administrative, and the enforcement of the rules, both written and unwritten.

Except, she’d forgotten about the marriage part.

Well, she didn’t _forget_ , exactly. She’d just… never expected it. She is awkward, and ugly, and stands head and shoulders above most people, and she’d never thought her perception would be high enough for prospective husbands to overlook all of those things. In fact, one could say her high perception is a constraint in itself. A Blue with better-than-eighty-six-percent perception could displace her from her position as Evenstar, but there are few who satisfy that criterion, even if someone of that standing might have any interest in a minor territory on the fringes of the Stormlands.

It would probably be of significant help if her father could afford a large dowry to sweeten the deal. But Chromatic dowries operate on a merit system, and neither she nor her father has much in the way of that. Even with the thousands of rules in The Wheel that govern the earning and losing of merits, they are far too isolated on Tarth to accumulate more than the average. It doesn’t matter that Brienne considers herself a law-abiding and helpful citizen, and has rarely been on the receiving end of a merit fine.

They could, of course, look outside of their own hue—a Red, for example, would bring their children closer to Purple—but she could never marry an Orange. Complementary colours are absolutely forbidden to marry. A matter of public decency, the rules say.

Such are the complexities and idiosyncrasies of Chromatic marriages. Nonetheless, just as Brienne is duty-bound to execute her responsibilities as Evenstar once her father passes, and he is duty-bound to see her married before he does. Those are the rules.

So, within the first year of her Test, her father had attempted to betroth her to three Stormlanders who hoped to marry up-colour. First, he tried to marry her to a Blue—a second son from House Caron, who’d scored a respectable sixty-seven percent on his Test. It was the most ideal situation they could have hoped for: a Blue who’d scored just high enough, but not so high that he could displace Brienne. Just before she was due to meet him for their two-week mandated courtship period, however, her father was informed via raven that the boy had died in an accident. They were given no further details.

Next, he tried to marry her to a Red—Ronnet Connington. His score of fifty-four percent was only just above the fifty percent threshold for nobility, but their children would have had decent enough Purple perception, and could have been married to a member of one of the Great Houses. When he’d arrived on Tarth for their courtship, however, he’d taken one look at Brienne, handed her a single rose, and told her and her father that he would be leaving on the next boat. She was the better perceptor between them by more than thirty percent, and yet it couldn’t save her from that humiliation.

Then, in some fit of desperation, Lord Selwyn had tried to marry her to a much older Green. Humfrey Wagstaff was sixty-five in both age and perception, and while he promised her father that he would not interfere with Brienne’s activities as Evenstar, he seemed to feel it was well within his rights to demand that she obey him in every other way—in how she would dress, and speak, even eat. Something came over her during their discussions, and she’d gifted Wagstaff a fist to the face. He’d fallen and broken his collarbone, then the betrothal soon after.

Her father gave up after that. Or seemed to, anyway. Three failed betrothals was bad luck—another one of those Unwritten Things—and all had happened in less than a year.

If she could have had her way, there was only one man Brienne would have considered marrying. When she was eighteen, Renly of House Baratheon had visited Tarth to ensure her father’s loyalty. The year before, Renly’s Test results had unexpectedly revealed that his Purple perception exceeded that of both his eldest brother Robert and his second brother Stannis. As the best perceptor of his generation, Renly would displace Robert not just as head of their House, but as Lord Paramount of the Stormlands—upon the occasion of his marriage, of course, as is the rule for the Great Houses. After all, the heads of the Great Houses must set an example for Chromatic continuity.

But Brienne didn’t want to marry Renly for his status. She believed him to be a good and compassionate man, a responsible leader, and it showed in how he’d cared enough to visit Tarth in the first place. It hadn’t been necessary, really. In the past few hundred years of relative peace, diplomatic visits have become a gesture of courtesy, more so than a means to secure allegiances. The Seven Kingdoms functions according to the Chromatic Hierarchy, and according to the rules listed in The Wheel, and there is no need for thrones or wars or even murder anymore. There is no need for Purples to make diplomatic visits, or for them to be kind to the awkward and ugly daughters of minor lords. Lord Robert had never bothered to visit her island in all his years of rule.

Renly had, though—even before he took over from his brother. He had come to Tarth, and he had treated her well. He was the only man outside of her household who had ever been kind to her, and it was enough to make her fall in love.

Oh, she had no illusions about him. She knew there was no chance of him returning her affections. In any case, the Baratheons are right at the blue end of Purple, and there would be no benefit to Renly marrying a Blue like her. If he wanted his heirs to succeed him, he would need them to score as highly as possible for Red perception in addition to Blue. He had, in the end, married a Red-leaning Purple, as his eldest brother had before him. At twenty-one, Brienne had travelled to Storm’s End to represent Tarth at Renly’s wedding to Margaery Tyrell. Her father had hoped she might be able to secure a match in the process, but she’d spent the trip heartbroken and barely spoke to anyone. Not that she’d have been able to speak to anyone even if she hadn’t been heartbroken.

It doesn’t matter now. Six months into his marriage, Renly Baratheon had died of Greyscale. The disease remains the number one killer in the Seven Kingdoms, and it isn’t unheard of for someone so young to contract it. Lord Robert himself had died of the Scale in his thirties—just a year before, in fact—so perhaps succumbing to it at a young age was hereditary. You never know when the Scale will get you, the saying goes—only that it will get you in the end. None of this made it any less tragic, but Brienne was comforted by the fact that upon diagnosis, a sufferer of Greyscale could be sent to the nearest Green Room. The Synthetic shade painted on its walls—innocuously called Sweetdream—would stimulate a highly pleasurable reverie, and you would eventually drift onwards to a painless death. Unless, of course, you were actually Green—then it would have no effect at all. It’s one of the downsides of being able to see a lifetime of nature’s rich colours. Brienne doesn’t know if this trade-off is worth it, but again, she’s never been friendly enough with a Green to ask. And she certainly couldn’t ask a Green who’d already been sent to the Green Room.

That was how, at age twenty-two, Brienne Tarth had already resigned herself to her fate. She had three failed betrothals under her belt, and the only man she’d ever loved had died far too young, and none of it could be changed by her ability to see more blue than most of the Seven Kingdoms.

Then, her father received an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Lord Selwyn had, it turned out, used a not-insignificant amount of merits to put her in the national Chromatic marriage listings. He’d mostly attracted halfhearted enquiries, and fearing yet another broken collarbone on his hands, had rejected them all. A few weeks ago, though, he’d been contacted by a _Purple_. Not just by any Purple—by Lord Tywin Lannister of Casterly Rock, the Warden of the West.

Who’d wanted to propose a match with his _eldest son_.

No one seems to know exactly why Jaime Lannister was yet to be married, though he would be thirty-two in a few moons. It was not for lack of perception—Jaime Lannister is seventy percent Purple, by way of an eye-watering ninety-three percent Red, mixed in with forty-seven percent Blue—but Brienne has heard little else beyond rumour that could explain the delay. It couldn’t be his looks, could it? He is beautiful by all accounts, as is his twin sister Cersei, whom Brienne had seen from afar at Renly’s wedding. Cersei had almost certainly tested within a couple of percentage points of her brother’s score—she’d married Robert Baratheon soon after her Test, and bore him a child within the first year. Surely Jaime Lannister could be matched with a Blue-leaning Purple too? Yet, Lord Tywin is prepared to marry him to a Blue like Brienne, with three failed betrothals under her belt, in line for a minor title that would mean nothing to the most prominent house of the Westerlands. Their children would most likely be _very_ high-hued Purples, yes—but she wonders if there is something intolerable about Jaime Lannister—something that Lord Tywin is expecting _her_ to tolerate.

Still, Brienne had promised her father she would at least meet the man, on the condition that she retain her right of refusal. And now she’s on a train, heading towards Lannisport, for her two-week mandated courtship with the son of one of the most powerful Purples in all of the Seven Kingdoms.

Well, she _would_ be on a train heading towards Lannisport, if she hadn’t fallen asleep partway through her journey. When she’d awoken, she’d found herself staring up at a very miffed Yellow—his bright circular badge stood out blindingly on the lapel of his tweed jacket—whose seat she would not have been sitting in if she’d gotten off the train about thirty seconds before. Unfortunately, the train was pulling out of King’s Landing Station, and there was no way to get off unless she wanted to arrive in Lannisport with a broken arm. So she’d apologised to the Yellow profusely, then wandered off in search of a conductor, who promptly informed her that this was the Kingsline express, and wouldn’t be stopping until the Crossroads. She would be better off changing to the River Line there than doubling back to King’s Landing to switch to the Goldline like she’d originally planned. Except buying a Chroma ticket on the train—even in second class—would set her back far more than she was comfortable paying. She’d had no choice but to purchase a Grey ticket for a fraction of the price.

So here she is now, in one of the Grey carriages. Some of the Greys had given her incredulous stares when she’d wandered in with a blue badge pinned to her blazer, but she’d had a lifetime of incredulous stares for reasons apart from her blue badge, and she knows she’ll get over it eventually if she concentrates hard enough. Besides, she isn’t breaking any rules. Not the way the Greys would be if they tried to sit in a Chroma carriage, no matter whether they had the merits or the coin to pay for it.

In truth, she doesn’t mind this part of the train very much. It’s sort of a relief not to be assailed by accents of Synthetic Colour in every direction, which is the norm in Chroma sections. There is a small national flag painted above the doorway separating the Grey and Chroma carriages—a six-colour wheel featuring the three primary and three secondary colours, centred on a field of grey—but nothing else is Synthetic besides that, not even the maps. It doesn’t bother her that the seats are wooden rather than cushioned like in the Chroma carriages, and though there isn’t as much legroom, there isn’t anyone sitting in the seat beside her or the two seats across from her. She gladly stretches her legs, the fabric of her favourite pair of tailored wide-leg pants pooling in the space between the seats.

“You’re not saving this seat for anyone, are you?” says a voice from the aisle, and she looks up to see an unreasonably handsome man pointing at the seat diagonally across from her. His shirt and pants are covered in dirt, and who knows what else—there isn’t even a Grey badge pinned anywhere, though non-spotting would usually result in a hefty merit fine—and his hair is hanging in limp strands about his face, down to his unkempt beard. But he really is _unreasonably_ handsome, and it takes her a while to remember that she should answer his question. She shakes her head, and reluctantly shifts in her very long legs. So much for the extra legroom.

This lack of legroom doesn’t seem to bother the unreasonably handsome man, though he must be almost as tall as she is. Or rather, he solves the problem by almost immediately propping his feet up on the edge of the seat beside her. _Rude._ She looks down at his dusty leather boots before she can stop herself, and notices that they’re covered in the faint multi-coloured grime of scrap. Well, she can only see the blue parts, but she can _infer_ that the grime is multi-coloured. He must be a collector, then, or maybe some kind of pigment scout. She’d heard that they need to go farther and farther afield these days to find the quantity of scrap colour required to make raw pigment, which would then be distilled into Synthetic Colour. Not a particularly rewarding trade, she thinks, her mind going to Tarth, and to the shipments from Essos that have been becoming increasingly rare.

Despite her glance at his boots, the man doesn’t move his feet. Instead, he says: “Think you’ll catch the Scale from the boots of a Grey?”

“Of course not.” She knows full well that that’s a myth. Just because the word ‘Grey’ is in the name doesn’t mean all Greys were carriers, though some people are still ignorant enough to believe otherwise.

His eyes—they look blue to her, but she supposes she wouldn’t be able to tell if they were green or even purple—draw down the length of her legs, then he tips his head towards the seat beside him. “You’re welcome to do the same, by the way. I don’t mind.”

“No, thank you,” she declines, and looks out the window to see her own coarse features reflected back at her in the glass. Her twice-broken nose; her swollen lips; her brittle, pale, shoulder-length hair. Maybe if she tries to count all her freckles, she’ll be at the Crossroads before she knows it.

“Suit yourself, Blue.”

She turns her head back. “Pardon?”

The man’s eyes fall on her badge. “You’re Blue.”

“Yes,” she acknowledges, and looks out the window again, hoping the conversation will stop there.

He doesn’t take the hint, though, or doesn’t care to. “What are you doing in this part of the train?” he continues.

“No more tickets,” she mumbles back, without meeting his eyes. She doesn’t want to have to explain how she’d ended up in this specific situation.

“Most people would rather wait for the next one than ride with the Greys.”

“I have somewhere to be.”

“Going to the North, are you?”

She sighs. “Ser, I don’t mean to be rude, but—”

“You don’t socialise with Greys.”

“I’m not in the habit of revealing personal information to _anyone_. Grey or otherwise.”

“That’s probably wise.”

It strikes her that he might think she has something against those without hue, so she feels compelled to add: “It’s not that I have—I don’t have any _issue_ with Greys.”

“It’s fine,” he shrugs. “You don’t have to explain.”

“Alright.”

“You’re just being safe. I could be a murderer for all you know.”

She frowns. Why would he say _that_? “No one _murders_ anymore,” she says, dropping her voice to a whisper on _murders_.

The unreasonably bitter man lets out an unreasonably bitter laugh. “You’re a naive one, Blue.”

“My name is—”

She stops herself before she can correct him. Better that he sticks with calling her Blue. She will, hopefully, never see this unreasonably handsome man again once she gets off at the Crossroads, and he can remember her as Blue, if he’ll remember her at all. And if he _does_ try to murder her before then, she is more than capable of defending herself. He isn’t the only one who’s worked with scrap colour, and she’s known since she was a child how grueling it could be. Tarth can’t afford the fanciest machines for hauling and sorting scrap, and she helps where she can, just as her father does. She has all the muscles to show for it.

The man doesn’t push for her name, or offer his own. He proceeds to run his fingers through his hair and down his clothes, as if that will make him any cleaner, and it’s only then that she realises he’s missing the last two fingers on his right hand. Before she can avert her gaze, however, he apologises for the mess, though he must know she was staring at his hand and not anything else.

“I’m afraid you’ve caught me on my way to my bath,” he says.

“Your bath?”

“Yes. I’m headed to Harrenhal. Near the Crossroads. Dreadful castle, great bathhouse.”

“You couldn’t have had a bath in King’s Landing?” she asks, then bites her lip. _First I stare at his hand, now this._ “Sorry. That wasn’t polite.”

“It’s fine. I just prefer to spend as little time in the capital as possible. And Harrenhal isn’t too far if I take the express.” Then, he lowers his voice. “Don’t tell anyone, Blue. It’s never crowded when I go, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

There isn’t anyone _to_ tell, even if Brienne was inclined to pass this information along. Her father, perhaps, though she doubts Lord Selwyn would travel all the way to Harrenhal for a bath. Or maybe—if the next two weeks goes well—she would find herself having to tell Jaime Lannister about this tip that she’d received from an unreasonably handsome man whom she met on a train. _A wife should not keep secrets from her husband,_ The Wheel says, _and a husband from his wife_. Worried that Lord Tywin might put her knowledge of The Wheel to the test, she’d read the section on marriage three times before she’d left Tarth.

They’re silent for the rest of the journey, though he does remove his feet from the seat next to her, and extend his legs out into the aisle. It makes Brienne wonder how tall Jaime Lannister is—not too much shorter than her, she hopes, even if she doesn’t care so much about things like that. There’s a lot about her that a husband might have to look past, and she should extend him the same courtesy.

When the train finally arrives at the Crossroads, they both stand. The unreasonably handsome man takes down his duffel bag from the overhead rack, while she grabs her small suitcase, realising too late that he must have seen the initials ‘B.T.’ printed on the leather.

“This is you, too?” he asks.

“This is me,” she replies. There isn’t any use in denying it now.

“I see. You’re going _west_ , not north.”

She doesn’t address his comment, only turns and walks down the aisle. “Enjoy your bath,” she tells him when they reach the door, then winces. That felt like a horribly intimate thing to say to an unreasonably handsome man.

“Oh, I will,” he smirks, right before he steps off the train, and disappears into the crowd.

Once both her feet are on the platform, Brienne hurries to the ticket booth, all thoughts of the unreasonably handsome man dissolving amidst her anxiety. She’s lost so much time already—the sun hangs perilously low in the sky—and she needs to get on the River Line as soon as possible.

“Excuse me,” she asks the attendant, “when is the next train to Lannisport?”

“You just missed the last one. Next train is eight-fifteen tomorrow morning.”

Of course she’s missed it. She was expected in Lannisport this evening, and now she’ll be almost a full day late. Perhaps she can make this her _fourth_ failed betrothal, now. Wouldn’t that be fun?


	2. A Fly in Amber

As it stands, Brienne’s journey to Lannisport is working out to be far more expensive than she’d intended. Unless she wants to spend the next fifteen hours on a bench in the train station, the merits she’d saved by downgrading to a Grey carriage for the extra leg of her journey would now have to go towards a room for the night. Luckily for her, there is an inn not too far from the station, and she heads over there hoping it wouldn’t cost her too much.

_Un_ luckily for her, she encounters a different obstacle once she arrives.

“We prefer coin, sweetling,” says the innkeeper, a stout middle-aged woman with a kind face. She is wearing an Orange badge, but is likely a low perceptor if she’s running a modest inn on the edge of the riverlands. “Merits aren’t much use to us out here.”

“Oh. I—” Brienne looks into her pouch, though she knows there’s a meagre amount in there. She’d only expected to spend merits on the train tickets to Lannisport and back, and hadn’t brought much money. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I have enough for more than a meal or two.”

“Missed your train, did you?” the innkeeper asks sympathetically, and Brienne nods. “You’re welcome to stay down here in the common room till morning. I’ll get you some broth and sweet cakes, on the house.”

Brienne opens her mouth so she can offer to pay for the food at least, but before she can get a word out, someone behind her says: “I’ll get her room, Masha.” 

She turns to see the unreasonably handsome man standing there, jingling some coins in his hand.

“Jay!” Masha exclaims, breaking into a wide smile. “My favourite customer.”

“You say that to all your regulars,” he grins. He has a very nice grin. _Unreasonably_ nice. Subconsciously, Brienne runs her tongue over her own crooked teeth.

“Only the good-looking ones,” Masha teases back. “And there aren’t many of those around here. Alright, two rooms it is.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Brienne objects, but the unreasonably handsome man— _Jay_ , apparently—waves her off.

“Do you want rooms next to each other?” Masha asks.

“No,” Jay tells her, “in fact, put us as far away from each other as possible.” He holds a hand up to his mouth, leans closer to Masha and says, “She doesn’t have a very good opinion of me.”

Masha narrows her eyes. “What have you done to the poor girl?”

Jay gestures at himself. “Only sat beside her on the train in this state.”

“You’ll be heading to Harrenhal, then?”

“Naturally.”

“I’ll have the nephew drive you over in a bit.” Masha turns to Brienne. “There’s space in the car if you’d like, sweetling. We have a partnership with the bathhouse, and it’s included with the room.”

Brienne is, frankly, still trying to absorb the fact that the unreasonably handsome man just casually paid for her room, so all she can say is: “Oh—uh, I—don’t know.”

“Well, if you decide in the next fifteen minutes,” Masha says, “just come back down. Could I have your name, please? For the register.”

“It’s…” She glances at Jay out of the corner of her eye. “Brienne. Brienne Tarth.”

Once Masha hands them their room keys, Brienne heads towards the stairs, with Jay following close behind her. “You didn’t have to give her your real name, you know,” he says under his breath.

Her foot makes contact with the first step more heavily than she intended. “Maybe I lied.”

“I doubt it,” he laughs softly. “You seem too honest.”

“How would you know?”

“Oh, just a feeling. Something in your eyes.”

“I didn’t tell you much on the train, did I?”

“Not saying anything isn’t the same as lying, Blue.”

“My name is—”

“Brienne,” he says, as they reach the top of the stairs. “I heard. Well, I’ll see you downstairs in fifteen.”

“I haven’t decided if I’m—”

But Jay is already walking down the hallway. It’s only when she’s in her room—a small but cosy space with a dresser and a sink—that she realises she hasn’t even thanked him for his generosity. She isn’t exactly excited about the idea of going to a bathhouse with a stranger she just met, but she isn’t sure if she’ll see him again if she’s leaving early tomorrow, so perhaps she _should_ go downstairs to express her gratitude at least. She makes her way to the common room to wait for him, and accepts Masha’s offer of sweet cakes in the meantime.

“You’ve decided to go?” Masha asks, when she sets the plate in front of Brienne.

“I’m… not sure. I didn’t expect to stay here tonight. And I’ve only met, um, Jay today.”

“Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s harmless.”

“You know him well?”

“He comes by every couple of months, always pays upfront, and never makes trouble. He won’t treat you wrong, if you’re on his good side.”

“And if you’re not?”

Masha leans in. “Let’s just say he’s helped me kick out a few unruly customers.” Then, she winks at Brienne, and walks away.

Barely two bites into her sweet cakes, Jay abruptly settles into the seat opposite Brienne, a small cloth bag—containing a change of clothes, probably—slung over his shoulder. “You’re coming?” he asks, grabbing one of the cakes off her plate without asking and taking a bite.

“I just wanted to thank you. For paying. I could give you some merits—”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I can’t possibly—”

“It’s fine, Brienne. Really.”

The way he says her name sends a chill down her spine, and it’s so disconcerting that her next question comes out too sharp. “Are you in the habit of paying for the rooms of strangers?”

“No,” Jay replies, unfazed, but doesn’t explain why he chose to pay for _her_ room. He pops the rest of the cake into his mouth, and closes his eyes as he savours it. “Fuck, that’s good. I never get tired of Masha’s desserts.”

He must have seen her eyes widen—he’d said one of the Forbidden Words, and Forbidden Words carry a five-merit fine—because he laughs. “Don’t worry, Blue. There’s no one around to deduct my merits. Unless you’re a snitch.”

“I’m—no!” she exclaims. Snitching might be a sure way to earn more merits, but it could earn you more enemies too. The practice doesn’t sit well with her.

“Good.” He slaps his hand on the table. “Now finish your cake, and let’s get going.”

“I still haven’t decided—”

He rolls his eyes. “It’s free. It’ll feel good. _Come_.”

She wants to remind him that the bathhouse wouldn’t be free if he hadn’t paid for her room, but she’s certain he’ll only roll his eyes at her again. Anyway, she supposes that going for a bath would be better than sitting in her room—which has no bath or shower of its own—and worrying about Lord Tywin’s displeasure. So, she wolfs down the rest of the cake, and follows Jay out the door to where Masha’s nephew is waiting with the car. 

(She reminds herself once more that she is taller, and stronger, and broader than Jay is, if he _does_ try to murder her.)

Harrenhal is a relatively short drive away, though travelling unfamiliar roads at dusk is unsettling. They say the night is dark and full of terrors, and Brienne had heard stories of people getting lost, or going mad, or even dying in the nighttime when they didn’t make it to any lit area before sundown. She can make out very little of the landscape beyond the street lamps, and if Harrenhal is truly dreadful like Jay had described, then it seems she will not see the evidence of it with her own eyes.

Soon enough, Masha’s nephew stops the car at what looks to be a side entrance to the castle, where a simple wooden sign declares, BATHHOUSE, with a large arrow. They head down a long hallway lit only by burning torches, and she finds herself inching closer to Jay.

“Are you sure about this place?” she whispers.

“I’m sure. It’s not the height of luxury, but the water’s always perfect. And it’s quiet too.”

“It’s very… historical,” she observes, brushing her fingers against the stone walls.

Jay chuckles. “That’s what they want us to believe. I’m sure there’s an original bathhouse somewhere in the castle, but I doubt it’s in usable condition.”

Still, if Jay hadn’t mentioned it, Brienne would think that this bathhouse is at least a few hundred years old, if not a thousand. The only feature that looks vaguely modern is a reception area at the end of the long hallway. From here, she can see a low-ceilinged room constructed out of stone and timber, with great stone tubs large enough to hold six or seven people at a time. There are only a handful of people around—both men and women—and a number of the tubs are empty.

Oh. There are both men _and_ women.

“Um,” she says, as she is handed a towel and a brush, “this is a unisex bathhouse?”

“Yes, ma’am. But we have separate changing rooms.”

“Is something wrong?” Jay asks, and she reluctantly shakes her head. At least there aren’t too many people around, and the lights are low, and she can have a tub to herself. She’ll just have to be quick going in and out of the water.

Brienne comes out of the changing room with her towel wrapped tightly around herself—it’s only just large enough to be decent on her—and scurries over to an empty tub in the corner. She doesn’t see Jay anywhere yet, so she quickly takes her towel off, folds it roughly, and slips into the water. _Oh_. The water _is_ perfect. Its heat soothes her muscles, stiff from a day of travel. She sinks herself onto the stone seat running along the edge, such that the water comes right up to her shoulders, and submerges her head.

_What are you doing, Brienne? Why are you in a bathhouse with an unreasonably handsome Grey you just met for the first time today, when you should be sitting down to dinner with your prospective Purple husband?_

When she comes up for air, Jay is standing on the edge right across from her.

Naked.

“For a second there,” he says. “I thought I’d have to pull you out of the water.”

She whips her head to the side, and thanks the heavens that the bathhouse is lit only by torchfire. “There are other tubs.”

“There’s space in this one.” She hears the soft splash of his body entering the water. “I’ll stay on my side, and you can stay on yours.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him dip his head beneath the water and come back up again. Slowly, she turns her head back to face him. With half the grime on him gone already, he looks far more than just _unreasonably_ handsome. If it was brighter in here, she might have been too stunned to snap: “You’re making the water all dirty.”

“I rinsed a little before I got in. Besides, baths are for _bathing_ , Blue.”

She pulls her knees into herself. “Are you going to murder me after all?”

The corners of his lips curve upwards. “I thought you said no one murders anymore.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I’d much rather enjoy my bath than murder anyone,” he says, which still isn’t an answer either.

“I’ll have you know that I can defend myself. I broke a man’s collarbone once.” Humfrey Wagstaff was sixty-five, and she hadn’t broken it _directly_ , but she doesn’t have to divulge either of those things.

Her confession only seems to make Jay even more curious. “Really? I hope he deserved it.”

She doesn’t reply, only reaches for her brush and begins to scrub at her arm. The thought of Humfrey Wagstaff, and of Ronnet Connington before him, fills her with an intense discomfort she wants desperately to wash away.

“Not so hard, Blue. You’ll scrub the skin off.” There’s something in his voice that’s darkened, for some reason. “This man—he hurt you?” he asks.

“Only with empty threats,” she replies, still scrubbing.

“You should have broken his balls instead.”

She stops, and not just because he’d said _balls_. “It wasn’t—” and then she thinks of the duties that would have been expected of her as a wife. Perhaps, in a way, it would have been exactly what Jay had assumed. “Look, Jay, I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Jaime.”

“Huh?”

“My name is Jaime. My real name.”

_What a coincidence._ It isn’t a unique name, but it isn’t particularly common either. “That’s funny, I—”

She stops. It wouldn’t do her much good to reveal her plans, especially when those plans involve one of the most powerful Purples in the Seven Kingdoms.

“What’s funny?” Jay— _Jaime_ —asks.

“Nothing.” She starts scrubbing again. “Just reminded me of someone, that’s all.”

“Ah. A paramour?” he says, coyly.

It’s such a ludicrous suggestion that a laugh escapes her.

“What’s funny about _that_?”

Brienne looks up sharply. “Don’t mock me. You see what I look like.”

Jaime doesn’t seem to acknowledge her comment at first. He reaches over for his brush with his right hand, and she has to catch herself before she can stare at his missing fingers. She refocuses her attention on her own brush instead, and feels the weight of what she’d just said out loud. _I’m ugly. Look at how I am ugly._

“I’ve travelled a lot in the past decade,” she hears him say after a few seconds, and she hesitantly looks back up again. “All of the Seven Kingdoms, and beyond. Lost two fingers in the process—” he raises his brush, gripped by his thumb and two remaining fingers— “but gained quite a lot of perspective.”

“… And?” 

“And I’ve realised… there’s no one way to look at something. Or some _one_. Sometimes you just have to… shift your position. Your point-of-view. So forgive me if I don’t find it so difficult to believe that _you_ might have a paramour.”

“Easy for you to say,” she grumbles, then regrets it immediately. There’s no reason for the unreasonably handsome man to know that _she_ thinks he’s unreasonably handsome.

Jaime pauses, a smirk dancing on his lips. “Now why would you say that?

“You know why,” she mutters.

“I thought you hadn’t noticed.”

“I would have to be blind.”

He laughs. “Well. People do treat me like I’m invisible when I’m Grey.”

_That was a strange way of phrasing it._ “What do you mean, _when_ you’re Grey?”

Something tenses in Jaime’s shoulders. “Did I say that? All this heat must be getting to my head.” He waves his brush in the air. “Well, you know what I mean. I think you’re the first Blue I’ve spoken more than a syllable to in months.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I like it this way.” Then, he shrugs his shoulders, as if to shake off that mysterious tension. “So. Tarth. Any relation to the island?”

“Some,” she replies, evasively.

“That’s one place I’ve never had the chance to visit. I would love to go.”

“People find it boring, if they can’t see blue or green.”

“How about you? Do _you_ find it boring?”

“No,” she says, allowing herself a small smile. “I think it’s beautiful.”

“You’re lucky. If I had to pick one of the primaries, I’d definitely pick Blue.”

“How would you know? Maybe there’s a lot to see with Red or Yellow.”

He lifts his left hand out of the water. “Blue sky.” He straightens his index finger. “Blue ocean.” He straightens his middle finger. Then, he straightens his ring finger. “And blue eyes, for some people. So I hear.”

Jaime looks at her pointedly as he says this, as if he already knows her eyes are blue. But that isn’t possible for a Grey—unless, of course, he has a smidge of Blue perception. You could still be classified as Grey if you tested under ten percent. Either way, she feels her cheeks heat the way they do when she’s embarrassed. “That’s not a lot of Blue things,” she says, casting her eyes to the side.

“Covers a lot of surface area, though. In places like Tarth.”

She nods, and feels compelled to change the subject. “So, where are you headed next?”

“Lannisport,” he says, with audible distaste.

Brienne freezes. First _Jaime_ , then _Lannisport_. How strange. For her father’s sake, she hopes these coincidences bode well for her courtship, even if she isn’t quite looking forward to the next two weeks. “Is there some perspective to be gained in Lannisport?” she asks, once she recovers from that momentary shock.

“Nothing I haven’t learned already.”

She huffs. “You think you know everything, don’t you?”

“I think I know far too much about the Seven damn Kingdoms,” he says, lifting one leg out of the water so he can scrub down his calf to his ankle. “Or maybe it’s everyone else who knows far too little.”

“That’s arrogant.”

“It isn’t arrogance.” He switches to his other leg. “Just wishing that things could be different, that’s all.”

“Like what?”

He stops scrubbing, submerges his leg again, and looks over at her with a piercing gaze. “I suppose I wish everyone could see colour. True colour. None of this Chromatic Hierarchy bullshit.”

“Well, we all wish _that_ ,” she says, ignoring yet another Forbidden Word.

Jaime gives her a smile that looks sort of… _sad_. As if to say, _I don’t think everyone wants it as much as you think_. She can’t help but find it slightly patronising, and she’s just about to say so when he asks:

“How about you? What do you wish were different?”

No one had ever asked her question like that before. So many things come to her mind—the inane rules of Chromatic marriages, to name one example—but then her thoughts go to Renly, and the only answer she can give is:

“I wish… I wish nobody died of Greyscale. That we could do something besides sending them off to the Green Room, even if that’s the most pleasant way to go.”

When she looks at Jaime again, his expression isn’t sad any longer, but in its place is something unreadable. “Do you really think that’s why people are sent to the Green Room?”

“What do you mean?” she frowns.

He tilts his head back down, and starts to scrub at his chest. “Forget it. Forget that I asked.”

“No,” she insists. She can’t just let it go. “What exactly are you suggesting?”

Jaime stops, the brush stationary under his clavicle, and stares at her. “You really want to know?”

“I want to know why you said what you said.”

“Alright.” He reaches behind him, slowly, and places his brush on the edge of the tub. “I said what I said, because I believe the Scale is just a convenient excuse.”

_What is this? What is he talking about?_ “You don’t think the Scale is real?”

“Oh, I’m sure it exists. I just don’t think it requires a trip to the Green Room. And I don’t think people are always sent to the Green Room just because they have the Scale.”

“But _everyone_ gets the Scale. You never know when the Scale will get you—’” 

“—only that it will get you in the end,” he finishes for her. “Well. That’s what they want us to believe.”

It’s the second time he’s said that sentence tonight, but he isn’t talking about the faux-historical stone walls of a bathhouse. “What are you,” she laughs nervously, “some kind of conspiracy theorist?”

“I suppose I sound like one, don’t I?” He leans back against the wall of the tub. “It’s hard to explain. I just have some… personal experiences, that make me doubt the veracity of it all.”

_Personal experiences? Is that all?_ “You’ve just decided to doubt one of the—the most incontrovertible truths of our society, because of some _personal experiences_?”

He narrows his eyes. “I told you to forget it. I have my reasons for questioning the practice, and you clearly have yours for believing otherwise.” 

“It isn’t about what I _believe_ —”

“Of course it is,” he snaps, his tone suddenly harsh. “It’s always about what they want us to believe. What they want us to _see_.”

Jaime might not be a murderer, but Brienne is starting to think he might be mad. Why else would he be spewing this—this _nonsense_? What right does he have to say these things about the Scale, and the Green Room? How dare he, when so many people—when _Renly_ —

She jerks to her feet abruptly, as if Jaime had reached over and struck her, and sends a wash of hot water down her body and across the tub. His jaw drops open slightly, and too late, she realises that she’s revealed all of herself to him. She’s too angry to care. 

“These are people’s lives you’re talking about. They’re—they’re not _fodder_ for your wild theories.”

Then, she climbs out of the tub, grabs her towel, and storms off.

Masha’s nephew won’t bring her back to the inn without Jaime, so Brienne has to sit in the car and wait for him to be done. He doesn’t take much longer, and she’s so preoccupied with _not_ making eye contact with him that she doesn’t even realise he’s changed out of his dirty clothes till they’re almost all the way through the completely silent drive. She doesn’t get a good look at him, though—once they get back to the inn, she stalks across the common room without so much as a wave to Masha. When she’s halfway up the stairs, she hears Masha ask Jaime again, “What have you done to the poor girl?”

Nothing. Only told her lies. Lies about paramours, and blue eyes, and Greyscale.

She wakes up bright and early the next morning, and leaves the inn before she can see Jaime again. At the station, she spends her merits on a Chroma ticket, though she could have survived another leg of her journey in the Grey carriages. She doesn’t want to be reminded of Jaime, or his words in the tub last night. She doesn’t want to think of Renly suffering anything other than a peaceful, unavoidable death.

Finally, a few hours later, she arrives in Lannisport, a port city many times larger and denser and busier than her home. But she is more than half a day late already, and now is not the time to take in the sights. Casterly Rock is less than a mile north of the city—when she asks the stationmaster for directions, the man points wordlessly to the colossal stone hill towering nearby—and she is perfectly fine to make the journey on foot. Back on Tarth, Evenfall Hall no longer stands, and the name refers to the large house built in the shadow of its ruins, where she and her father and a handful of servants reside. Here in Lannisport, Casterly Rock stands proud and imposing as it must have for thousands of years.

She barely has time to admire the grandeur of the castle, though, because she is swiftly escorted deep into the Rock, to Lord Tywin’s solar. His face is set in a stern expression, and though he is seated at his desk, his posture seems proud and imposing as Casterly Rock itself. He is dressed in a fitted jacket embroidered with lions, and Brienne imagines it must be richly coloured, even if she can’t see the evidence of it for herself.

“You’re late,” he says, without looking up from his work.

“Yes, my lord. Please accept my apologies. I missed the train at—”

“Luckily, my son has not arrived home yet. He is due tomorrow, and your courtship may begin then.” He lifts his head, but beyond a raised eyebrow, he doesn’t seem visibly ruffled by her appearance. He does, however, let his eyes scan down her body, and back up again. “Do you have… other clothing?”

“Other clothing, my lord?”

He looks back down at his papers again. “If you do end up marrying my son, you will eventually be Lady of Casterly Rock. I expect you to dress accordingly.”

Then, he dismisses her.

Brienne is brought to her chambers, a generously-sized room that, despite its opulence, disheartens her with its lack of blue objects. There is nothing about it that resembles the bathhouse, but the lack of windows still reminds her of the night before, even with electric lights here rather than torches. She opens her suitcase, and looks through all the clothes that she brought with her. Lord Tywin was not exactly specific about what he meant by _dressing accordingly_ , though it is safe to assume that he meant _not in a blazer and wide-leg pants_. She knows prospective wives are encouraged to dress in conventionally ‘feminine’ attire for their courtship, but she’d hoped the pants would be a suitable compromise. She is more used to trousers, which are easier to travel in anyway, and she thought the excess fabric might give the illusion of a skirt. This compromise clearly had not amused Lord Tywin, and she will need to do better tomorrow. The best she can do from the clothes she’d packed is an ankle-length skirt and a silk blouse, so she sets that aside for her first meeting with Jaime Lannister. 

When dinner is brought to her room, she is informed that that meeting will occur first thing in the morning. Jaime Lannister has returned a day early, and Lord Tywin will introduce them at breakfast.

Her sleep that night is restless. Brienne has dream after strange dream, and wakes at least three times before morning. She dreams first of Ronnet Connington, who has a rose between his fingers, while she has a sword in her hands. When he holds the rose out to her, she cuts his hand off.

Then, she dreams that she is in the room when Renly dies. But it is not the Green Room, and he doesn’t die of the Scale. Instead, he is killed by a shadow with a man’s face, wielding a shadow of a blade that isn’t there. He bleeds to death in her arms.

Finally, she dreams of Jaime. She dreams that he lost his two fingers for her sake. She dreams that he faints in the tub, that she has to catch him before he sinks into the water. She dreams that she tends to him after—scrubbing him clean, and trimming his beard, and dressing him in soft blue fabrics embroidered with lions and stars. 

_Jaime_ , he tells her, _my name is Jaime._

The next morning, after banishing her nightmares with a series of deep breathing exercises, she is shown into the dining hall, a large, cavernous room with a table as long as the ceiling is high. At one end of the table, two people sit with their backs to her—Lord Tywin at the head, and his son, she presumes, at his right. Her presence is announced, and the younger man stands from his seat.

When he turns, Brienne finds herself face to face with someone she’d never thought she’d meet again. He’d had his hair cut since she saw him last, and he’s dressed in significantly nicer clothes, and, despite all the anger he’d made her feel, she still finds him _so unreasonably handsome._

“Lady Brienne,” says Jaime—Jaime _Lannister_. “Welcome to Casterly Rock.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive the fact that Jaime was low key acting like a serial killer in this chapter


	3. Golden Opportunity

After the most uncomfortable breakfast Brienne has ever had the misfortune of experiencing—during which she’d had to pretend she’d never seen Jaime Lannister before in her life, naked or otherwise—Lord Tywin grants her and Jaime leave to begin their two-week courtship. The ritual is, honestly, somewhat of a farce. Barring violent objections on either side, noble unions are more often than not dependent on negotiations between the two families, rather than any interactions during the courtship itself. It isn’t uncommon for two people to meet for only the bare minimum amount on each day, and go about their business the rest of the time. There is talk of some couples who fall madly in love during this period, but Brienne finds that rather difficult to believe. Though she supposes it took less than that for her to fall in love with Renly.

Right now, she thinks she is more likely to come out of this two weeks despising Jaime Lannister. She is, in fact, on the verge of triggering her right of refusal even before their courtship begins.

First, though, she has to figure out how to get back to her chambers. On a hunch, she’d turned right upon leaving the dining hall, but Casterly Rock is so labyrinthian that she must have been walking aimlessly through its hallways for the past ten minutes, with Jaime following close behind her.

“Where exactly are you going?” he finally asks, his voice echoing down the corridor.

“My room.”

“This isn’t the right direction—”

“I don’t care.”

Suddenly, she feels a hand circling her wrist and yanking her to the side, and then everything goes dark. _Great._ Now she’s trapped in a small, dimly-lit alcove with the last man in the world she wants to be trapped in a small, dimly-lit alcove with.

“What do you want?” she demands, as she blinks rapidly to adjust to the lack of light.

“I believe we’re supposed to be _courting_ ,” he replies, his voice slick with sarcasm. “Though I think we got a headstart on that, considering we’ve already shared a bath.”

“ _You_ got in the tub with _me_. That wasn’t _sharing_.”

“Fine, whatever. Will you just—can we talk?”

“About what? How you masqueraded as a Grey and accosted me on a train, and then bribed me into accompanying you to a bathhouse so I would sit there and listen to your—” She inhales sharply. “Did you—did you _know_?”

“Know _what_?”

“On the train. You knew who I was?”

“No! I didn’t even know my father had set up another courtship until I got back yesterday!”

“What kind of father does that?”

“ _My_ kind of father. Although you’re the first one in a year, actually.”

“So meeting me on the train was entirely coincidental.”

“Yes!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, it’s the truth.”

_It can’t be._ “But why would you—talk to—pay for my—go to the—with _me_?”

Jaime gives her a quizzical look. “You intrigued me,” he says, matter-of-factly.

“I _intrigued_ you?” she repeats, furrowing her brow. How is that sufficient reason for anyone to do anything? Is this a Purple thing? It must be a Purple thing.

“A Blue openly sitting in the Grey carriage,” he reminds her. “ _Eighty-six percent_ Blue, as my father enthusiastically informed me last night.”

“You—you were a _Purple_ sitting in the Grey carriage.”

“Yes, but everyone else _thought_ I was Grey. Including you. And you talked to me anyway.”

“So? I thought you said you didn’t like people talking to you.”

“I don’t like people talking to me when I don’t want to talk to _them_.”

“Neither do I,” Brienne says, making it clear with her eyes that by _people_ , she means _Jaime_. She turns to exit the alcove, but he catches her by the arm again.

“Wait,” he pleads. “Brienne. I want to apologise. In the bathhouse—I got carried away.”

“That’s how you’re describing it? You got _carried away_?”

His jaw tenses. “May I remind you that _you_ pushed _me_ into elaborating?”

“So it’s _my_ fault now?” she retorts. “ _You_ brought it up in the first place!”

“Okay.” He holds his hands up, palms facing her in surrender. “Look. I’m sorry. Clearly what I said offended you and—I shouldn’t have mentioned any of it.”

“Are you only sorry because you offended me?”

Jaime groans, then closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Alright, fine. I’m sorry it came up, but I’m not sorry that I believe what I believe. I told you, I have my reasons.”

“People die of the Scale all the time. You don’t get to throw accusations like that around without any sort of proof.”

“And you don’t get to demand proof from me.”

“Fine. I won’t. Goodbye, Jaime.”

Then, she strides angrily out of the alcove, and continues down the hallway.

“Wrong way,” Jaime calls from behind her, and she stops. “Turn back, take two rights, a left, then another right to get to the guest chambers.”

She turns back as he’d told her to, but doesn’t look at him when she passes.

They avoid each other for three days, apart from sharing increasingly frigid breakfasts with a visibly displeased Lord Tywin. She spends the rest of her time wandering the halls of Casterly Rock, bringing a piece of paper and a pencil with her so she can make crude maps along the way. Whenever she spots Jaime at the other end of a hallway, or across a courtyard—which happens more times than one might expect in such a huge castle—she turns and walks in the opposite direction without even so much as a nod. She’s being petty, she knows, but she can’t seem to forget what he said. She can’t forget that he planted that seed in her head, a thought that Renly might not have needed to die.

On the fourth day, when they’re having breakfast under the watchful eye of Lord Tywin, Jaime stiffly asks her if she would like to take a walk around Lannisport today. Lord Tywin turns his watchful eye to her, and Brienne finds this makes it impossible for her to decline. So, once they’re done with their meal, she heads to her chambers to change into something more suitable for a day out in the city. Jaime meets her at her door soon after, and when he offers her his left arm, she reluctantly slips her hand into the crook of his elbow.

“Are you still mad at me?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Alright.”

Jaime doesn’t speak again until they’re out of the castle, and she feels her palm grow sweaty on the fabric of his sleeve. As they stroll towards Lannisport, he finally says: “If it wasn’t evident, I’m doing this at my father’s command.”

“It was,” she replies, thinking of Lord Tywin’s watchful eye.

“He’s adamant that I cease my attempts at sabotage,” Jaime sighs, “though this is the first time I’ve ever managed to sabotage a betrothal _before_ a courtship has even begun.”

“How many times has this happened before?”

“Oh.” He counts under his breath. “I’m not sure. Maybe ten?”

“ _Ten?_ ”

“Might be more.”

“I’ve only had _three_ betrothals that failed,” she blurts out, then claps her free hand over her mouth. Why did she say _that_? She can feel the heat blooming in her face already.

“Ah,” he says, looking over at her with amusement. “A fellow saboteur.”

“Only for one of them,” she mumbles beneath her palm.

“The broken collarbone?”

It takes her a while to remember that she’d mentioned that to Jaime at the bathhouse. “Yes,” she says, dragging the back of her hand over her cheeks in a futile effort to make the heat subside. “The broken collarbone.”

“I’m sure he deserved it.”

She thinks of the deep satisfaction of her fist connecting with Humfrey Wagstaff’s wrinkled face, but doesn’t feel inclined to share the details with Jaime. “And your prospective wives?” she asks, changing the subject. “Did they deserve whatever happened?”

“Not really. Some of them were quite unobjectionable, actually. I’ve had to get really creative over the years to minimise any… hurt feelings.” He lifts his right hand, the one with the two missing fingers, and gives it a wave. “This helped for a couple of them.”

He couldn’t have been so desperate that he cut off his own fingers, could he? “You didn’t…”

“Oh no. I’m not _that_ creative.” Jaime flexes his hand. “I lost my fingers in an accident.”

She nods in relief despite his vague reply. “Why the sabotage, then? If all the women were so unobjectionable?”

He comes to a stop in the middle of the path. “Call it a… a rejection of the institution of Chromatic marriage.”

“None of this Chromatic Hierarchy… b… bull-sh—?” she recalls from the bathhouse, her tongue stumbling over the syllables of the Forbidden Word.

Jaime grins at her attempt. “Exactly. My father has been furious for ten years running. He wants me to inherit, but I’ll need to marry before that can happen—you know the rules for the Great Houses.”

She nods again. “So… how will you sabotage this one?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“I have the right of refusal,” she offers.

“I heard. I thought you might have triggered it by now.”

She looks at her feet, and absently kicks at the dirt. “My father would be disappointed. He never thought I’d have the chance to marry up-colour.”

“Hmm. You sound close.”

“It’s only been the two of us for the longest time.” She readjusts her grip on Jaime’s arm. “Anyway. Just thought I’d offer. It’s a better option than breaking your collarbone.”

“Yes,” he replies with a smile. “I’d rather avoid that.”

They start walking again, with no further discussion of her offer, and Brienne begins to expect that they will spend the rest of their way to the city—if not their entire morning—in an uneasy silence. A few minutes later, though, Jaime says:

“Do you know that you blush?”

“… Blush?”

“Just now, when you mentioned your betrothals. Your face went quite red.”

“Oh!” Is that what that heat is? The way her face burns when she’s embarrassed? She knows there’s a Synthetic Colour called Blush Pink, but she’s never made the connection before now. “You could see that?”

“It was… obvious. To me. Ninety-three percent Red, as you’re probably already aware.”

She sighs heavily. “I never realised it was something people could _see_.”

“Not _all_ people. Their Red perception would need to be well above average.”

Brienne tries her best to find Jaime’s words reassuring—at least, as a Blue, she won’t ever be able to see exactly how obvious the blush is for herself—but she can’t help but feel slightly betrayed by her own unruly body. That sense of betrayal lingers over the next few hours, and she is glad that they stick to the most mundane, non-blush-inducing conversation topics as they head for the city’s sprawling Colour Garden. As the ornate sign at its grand entrance proclaims, the park has won Most Kaleidoscopic at the Annual Colour Garden Awards for twenty years running. Lord Tywin, Brienne learns from Jaime, is almost single-handedly responsible for funding all of it. It’s the most impressive Garden she has ever visited, both in its size (immense) and its design (elaborate yet tasteful), but Jaime seems a little bored by it all. He must have come here countless times throughout his life, she thinks, and visited other Colour Gardens in the Seven Kingdoms too. What a luxury it is to be bored by colour.

Eventually, their stomachs begin to growl in protest. Jaime leads them to a tavern by the harbour, where they are shown into a private dining room that overlooks the water. The Synthetic spot on the door indicates that this is a privilege of Purples, and as she observes how Jaime is treated with so much deference, she can’t help but wonder why he would choose to travel as a Grey.

“I _don’t_ travel as a Grey,” he reminds her when she plucks up the courage to ask. “I just don’t travel with a badge at all, and let people assume what they wish.”

_None of that Chromatic Hierarchy bullshit._ “Don’t you worry about the merit fine for non-spotting?”

“Not really. I earn enough merits for what I do, and I’m not in the habit of stockpiling them. I can manage the odd fine.”

“You work in scrap colour, don’t you?” she asks, though it’s a pointless question. Almost everyone works in scrap colour in some way or another.

Jaime nods. “Scouting, collecting, sorting, all of it. Lots of places could use a high Red perceptor, especially now that sources are dwindling. They need someone who can see even the faintest bit of colour.”

“And you’ve been doing that since your Test?”

“No,” he says, without lifting his eyes from his plate. “Started doing that about two years after.”

Something had clearly happened in those two years, but Brienne doesn’t feel like it’s her place to ask. “I assume your father isn’t too happy about your activities,” she comments instead.

“He isn’t. But the Warden of the West can’t possibly say that his son matters more than the production of Synthetic Colour. That wouldn’t be very _Chromatic_ of him, would it?”

“Don’t you think Synthetic Colour is _bullshit_ too?” she asks, mouthing _bullshit_ this time rather than saying it out loud, which doesn’t feel any less wrong than it did earlier.

Jaime shrugs. “Lesser of two evils. Colour egalitarianism is better than Purple elitism.”

“You’re in a Purple dining room right now,” she points out.

“I’d be ushered in here even if I _was_ wearing a Grey badge. I can’t go anywhere in Lannisport without being recognised. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

Brienne nods, and chews, and ponders.

They make their way back to Casterly Rock after lunch, and Jaime graciously accompanies her to her rooms. Before she can head inside, he asks once more:

“Are you still mad at me?”

“Does it matter?” she frowns. She doesn’t understand why he needs to ask her again, or at all. “We’ll part ways in ten days' time. Soon we’ll forget we ever had that argument.”

He gives her an odd look, bows his head once, and walks away.

The following days pass in much the same way—a few hours spent together in the morning or afternoon to appease Lord Tywin. There is no talk of the Scale or the Green Room, and she finds that she can forget sometimes that Jaime planted that seed in her head at all. It’s good, in a way—best to run the course of this courtship uneventfully. This is the furthest she’s ever gotten in any prospective betrothal, and when she returns home without a husband, perhaps her father will find that fact encouraging at least.

Jaime makes no further mention of her offer, though, and if he has any other ideas about how he’ll sabotage this betrothal, he doesn’t share them with her. They speak, instead, about their childhoods. As he takes her around Casterly Rock, through caverns and tunnels that she wouldn’t have dared to explore otherwise, he tells her of his brother Tyrion, and the adventures they’d had in the castle. About his sister, he seems reticent, as if they were close once and are no longer. Brienne doesn’t pry; Cersei Baratheon had unsettled her even from afar, and she imagines that the woman might have the same effect on her brother. In return, Brienne can only share very little about Galladon, but when Jaime brings her to the old armoury—every weapon kept immaculately polished, even though there’s no use for them anymore—she tells him of how, as a child, she’d had the silly idea that she could become a knight.

“A knight?” Jaime teases. “Brave, and just, and defender of the innocent?”

She nods as she observes her reflection in the blade of a greatsword. “In the old stories, all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining.”

“You chose the gallant knight over the beautiful maid?”

“I was a realistic child,” she laughs, hoping he won’t hear the hollowness of it. “I saw myself in the mirror every day, and chose the more plausible option.”

He doesn’t laugh with her; only gives her that odd look again. It makes her wonder if that look is pity, though it doesn’t resemble any look of pity she’s received before.

So there are eight days left, then seven, then six, then five. Still, Jaime says nothing of the refusal, and Brienne is starting to wonder if she’s just expected to waltz into Lord Tywin’s solar at the end of the two weeks and say, _thank you for your hospitality, but I won’t be marrying your son due to irreconcilable differences_. She isn’t even sure whether their differences are truly so irreconcilable anymore. Not that it matters—Jaime has no wish to marry, and she has no wish to marry someone who has no wish to marry.

“Can I ask you a question?” Jaime says, when they’re sitting in the courtyard on the eleventh day.

_Finally._ “Should I speak to your father?”

“What?” he frowns. “What about?”

“About triggering my right of refusal,” she replies. “This… isn’t about that?”

“Oh—no,” he says, shifting uncomfortably beside her. “It’s… it’s about what happened in the bathhouse.”

The hair rises on the back of her neck. “Oh.”

“When you said—when you—” he clears his throat— “came out of the water.”

She stands from the stone bench she was sharing with him, and takes a few steps away. “Yes.”

“You seemed… agitated. But you didn’t—your first instinct wasn’t to cry Chromatic blasphemy. _These are people’s lives you’re talking about_ , you said.”

“Yes.”

“Do you truly—do you really care about the—” He stops, and sighs. “Never mind. Forget I asked.”

Brienne turns back to face him. “Do I really care about…?”

He brings his palms together, and rests his fingers against his lips. “About the innocents, I suppose,” he finishes eventually. “My suggestion that people might not need to—that the Green Room isn’t necessary.”

“I do care. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Most people don’t care very much.”

She nods, and tries to pick her next words carefully. “Well—I can’t say I’m entirely selfless. I… I knew someone who died of the Scale. Young.”

“Oh.”

“I just didn’t like thinking of him as having died an unnecessary death.”

“Him,” Jaime murmurs. “One of your betrothals?”

“No. He was…” And then she remembers that Jaime must have known Renly through his late good-brother, so she settles on: “It wouldn’t have been an advantageous match. Chromatically speaking.”

“An Orange?”

“No.” She bites her lip. “A… a Blue-leaning Purple.”

Jaime stiffens at that, and Brienne fears she’s said too much. She suspects there aren’t too many Blue-leaning Purples who die of the Scale at a young age. Perhaps he already knows she is speaking of Renly.

“Excuse me,” she whispers, and backs away.

She doesn’t see Jaime again for two days. She tells a servant that she isn’t feeling well, and takes her meals in her windowless chambers while refusing the offer of a maester. By the afternoon of the thirteenth day, she’s resolved to inform Lord Tywin of her refusal, with or without a discussion with Jaime. _There are irreconcilable differences_ , she will say, without really believing her own words.

Then, just after six, there’s a knock at her door. She expects that it will be the servant with her dinner, but instead, it’s Jaime.

“There’s something I want to show you,” he says, and offers her his arm. “Will you take dinner with me in my rooms?”

Somehow, Brienne had formed the impression that their rooms are in entirely different corners of the castle, but the walk to Jaime’s chambers doesn’t take them long. When she steps through the door, though, it feels worlds apart from her own. Its extravagance shouldn’t be surprising—he’s the heir to the whole castle after all—but her breath still catches in her throat. Not because of its size, or its lush decor, but because he has _windows_. They look out over the sea, so they must be cut right into the stone face of Casterly Rock. Brienne feels herself drifting across the room, drawn to the setting sun. Most of its colours aren’t visible to her, but she can see the way the blue sky retreats from the light, and that is sublime in itself.

“One of the few things I truly love about this place,” Jaime says from behind her.

“What does it look like to you?” she asks, without taking her eyes off the horizon. His Blue score might be mediocre, but he has near-perfect Red perception. Sunsets must look quite wondrous to him.

“Do you really want to know?”

She turns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—if it were possible for you to see all the colours of the sunset, would you want to?”

“Of course I would.” She looks back to the horizon. “But that _isn’t_ possible.”

She’s so mesmerised by the view that she barely realises that Jaime has walked into another room; distantly, she hears the soft opening and closing of a drawer. When he comes back in, he walks up to her and says: “Can you keep a secret?”

“What kind of secret?”

He holds his hand up in response, and there is something resting in his palm like an offering. She sees that it’s a silver circular compact, with a dragon carved into its cover and small jewels where its eyes should be. It must be a swatch case—though this is the most ostentatious one she’s ever seen—the kind people use to keep single swatches of Synthetic Colours. And there is only one type of Synthetic Colour that most people carry swatch cases for.

“I don’t do that,” she says, warily. By _that_ , she means green-peeking. Most people had a recreational gaze at Lime every now and then—she’d been told it could be calming, among other things—though others abuse harder greens, and risk damaging their vision, or worse, in the process. She’d heard that some even peek at the Sweetdream of the Green Room, hoping to have a taste of the reverie without the death that comes after.

“It’s not Lime. Or any Green you’ve ever heard of.”

“What is it, then?”

“What do you know of Wildfire?”

_Wildfire?_ “It’s a—a banned substance, isn’t it? A flammable liquid.” She looks down at the compact again. “Are you telling me this contains _wildfire_?”

“Not in the way that you think.” Jaime inches closer to her, and lifts the hand holding the compact. “Here, it’s—it’s easier if I show you.”

She takes a step back before he can open the lid. “What’s going to happen?”

“Nothing bad, as far as I’ve been able to tell,” he reassures her. “I’ve never suffered any ill effects. Quick, before the sun sets.”

She isn’t sure what peeking at this swatch has to do with the timing of the sunset, but she takes a deep breath anyway, and steps forward. Jaime moves to stand right beside her, and flips open the cover. _How strange_. This green swatch is—it’s not a single colour, but a sort of gradient, and—

Her vision goes white. _Jaime_ , she tries to call out, but she can’t seem to say anything. Then, a voice in her head says:

_Thank you for accessing the Wildfire Protocol. The effects of Wildfire will last approximately thirty minutes. Recommended frequency of use is no more than once a week. Side effects may include temporary confusion, nausea, and anxiety, which should subside within the first few minutes. If you consent, blink three times for reconfiguration. If you would like to exit the Protocol, please keep your eyes closed for a duration of ten seconds._

Brienne considers the latter option for a moment, before blinking three times as instructed. Almost immediately, her vision comes rushing back—

No. It can’t be—it isn’t anything like the vision she’s known all her life.

It’s not just blue anymore.

She can see _everything_. Natural colour— _true_ colour.

“Jaime,” she exhales.

“I know.”

“How is this—what’s _happening_?”

He doesn’t answer. “Come,” he says, offering her a hand. “Look out the window.”

With Jaime’s assistance, she fumbles her way over to the window—her brain can’t seem to decide if she’s still in his rooms, or in some kind of fantasy—where she’s met by the most incredible sight. All across the sky, reds and oranges and yellows bleed into each other with no way to tell where one ends and the next begins; even _purples_ dance along the clouds, intermingling with the blues she’s seen all her life, and yet can hardly recognise now in this new symphony. The rays of the setting sun seem to pick out every wave, every rock, every building in Lannisport and every vessel in its harbour; and it isn’t just the colour—it’s also the contrast, the detail, the texture all suddenly come alive. It’s just so—so _breathtaking_.

“Fuck,” she hears, and—oh, it had come out of _her mouth_. A Forbidden Word. _Fuck. Fuck_ is right. _Fuck_ is the only word for this. A Forbidden Word for a forbidden sight. She can feel tears filling her eyes, and even _this_ is some new experience, the way the colours can blur and intermingle in her watery vision. She lets the tears fall; it feels such a pity to have to wipe her eyes now.

“Is this real?” she asks, sweeping her palms over her cheeks. “Or just a—a hallucination?”

“I think it’s real. It’s physiological. Look—look at me, in my eyes.”

Brienne tears her gaze away from the landscape, to see Jaime bathed in a warm yellow-orange glow. _He’s so beautiful in this light_ , she thinks, though she manages to stop herself from saying it out loud. There’s nothing unreasonable about his handsomeness at all. To be unreasonable is to be senseless, but his beauty seems to make all the sense in the world.

“Your eyes are green,” she says, remembering his request from a few moments before. Not blue, or purple, but _green_. She can see it, and it’s _wonderful_.

“They are.” He breaks into a smile. “I can’t even see that myself, without the Wildfire—isn’t that funny? But look—my pupils.”

He’s right. His pupils are unnaturally wide. “Mine look like that too?”

He nods. “It’s not just the colour. Don’t you notice that things seem… brighter?”

She looks around the room, lit mostly by the light of the fire burning in the hearth. It’s true—she’d been distracted by all the colours of the sunset before, but it seems she can see more light, in addition to colour. “How is this possible?” she asks.

“I don’t know. My brother has some theories, but—”

“Your family knows about this?”

“Only Tyrion. I let him peek a few years ago, after his Test.”

“What is this? How do you—why do you even have this?”

A shadow falls over Jaime’s face. “It… came into my possession. From someone who… who had been abusing it. He went mad, and died because of it.”

“What?” She looks down at the compact again, in Jaime’s hand. “I shouldn’t have—we shouldn’t have peeked at it then! If it’s so dangerous—”

“It’s not supposed to be, in the recommended amount. You heard what the voice said.”

“You just said he _died_. He’d abused it, and—”

“He was using it far more than once a week. But this didn’t kill him. He was murdered.”

“What—” _Murdered?_ What in the world has she just gotten herself into? “How—why?”

“I’m still not entirely sure. This happened years ago. All I know is… when it was discovered that—that he had this.” Jaime holds up the compact. “When they found out about it. He was sent to the Green Room the next day. They said he had the Scale, Brienne. But he _didn’t_. He was mad because of the Wildfire, but _he didn’t have the Scale._ ”

Her head is swimming. The Wildfire, the Scale, the Green Room—what is this? How could it all be connected? Her thoughts flash to the bathhouse, and something dawns on her. “This is it. _This_ is the personal experience you were talking about.”

Jaime gives her a solemn nod. “It isn’t the only one. But yes. This is why I have doubts about the Scale. Why I believe it could be a—a convenient excuse.”

_Renly._ Renly who might not have had the Scale, who had been sent to the Green Room anyway. “You can’t die of the Scale?” she asks, her voice trembling.

“How would we know? It’s always the Green Room that kills you first, isn’t it?”

It’s too much. It’s too much, all at once. Just a few minutes ago, she was seeing the sunset for the first time, in all its glory. And now—

“Why are you telling me this, Jaime? Why did you—”

“Because I need you to trust me, Brienne.” Jaime takes one of her hands, then the other. “Then I need you to marry me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I’m going to warn you now that as much as I’ve been hinting at larger conspiracies, this is really a love story more than anything. So I’m focusing on that payoff so that I can actually finish this story in seven chapters rather than seventy.


	4. The Grass is Always Greener

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From this point forth, I sort of address another one of my three prompts: **A touch-heavy story. Focus on depictions of touch, whether it is kind, gentle, sensual or combative. A touch-starved trope. We have two 6-foot-something people, let’s take advantage of all that skin, haha!**
> 
> Basically, it’s going to become real clear that the dystopian setting is just an excuse for… other stuff.

She agrees.

She isn’t quite sure what makes her agree, but she does.

Perhaps it is the thought of finding out the truth. About Renly’s death—if he hadn’t contracted the Scale at all, and wasn’t meant to die—and who knows how many others who might have died in the way he did. About the Wildfire Protocol, and the ability to see in natural colour, and what all of it could mean. _My brother can explain further_ , Jaime says, _whenever we next visit King’s Landing_. Tyrion Lannister. He, and Jaime, and the small faction of Purples who have begun quietly organising a splinter group in the past couple of years. _This isn’t the way we should be ruled_ , Jaime says. _Controlled and stratified by the colours we see. But we need people in positions of power, and you know how the rules are. We have to marry, to set an example. Chromatic continuity._

 _But why me?_ she asks. _Why not—you could marry anyone else._

 _I trust you,_ he tells her, inexplicably. _I think you care about the greater good, regardless of hue. You won’t have to join us, if you don’t want to, but—I’d like to—to not have to keep too many secrets._

She turns away. _Then marry someone who’s already part of this._

 _There aren’t many of us, I’m afraid,_ he admits. _And it would be… it would be good for me to marry someone my father already approves of. But I’ll not force you._

She agrees, of her own accord. It isn’t force. Jaime isn’t even asking so much of her, really. He’d only asked her to marry him, and to keep his secrets—nothing more—and she had arrived at Casterly Rock prepared to do both of those things. Besides, she realises she doesn’t much mind the idea of being married to Jaime Lannister. Despite the rocky start, conversation had come to flow easily between them during their courtship. And he is beautiful, in all the ways she isn’t—she won’t lie to herself by saying that doesn’t help. When she wakes on the morning of the fourteenth day, she thinks, all things considered, that being married to Jaime will be quite bearable.

 _What we’re doing,_ he’d told her, _it might take years of planning. It’s only the beginning._

 _I expect so,_ she’d said, swaying a little on her feet. She felt caught off guard by all of it.

 _The other thing is,_ Jaime had ventured, tentatively, _my father will expect heirs._ _But I can try to fend him off, if—_

That incomplete sentence had made her wonder if he was willing to bear with _her_ , in the ways that he would need to for children to come. _There should be an heir for Tarth as well_ , was her only reply, and Jaime nodded. That heir would be Purple, and high-hued too, given Jaime’s Red perception and her Blue. House Tarth might turn Purple, it dawns on her, if their child’s Blue score is high enough to succeed her as Evenstar. She would need to consult The Wheel again to figure out the mechanics of that.

Or perhaps it will not matter by then. Perhaps society as she knows it will have irrevocably changed.

So she leaves Casterly Rock on the fifteenth day, all but betrothed to Jaime Lannister. In Lord Tywin’s eagerness to secure the match for his wayward son—or perhaps in his lack of any real interest in Tarth at all—he voiced no issue with Brienne retaining the title and position of Evenstar in the future. As her consort, Jaime would have no influence on Tarth’s affairs, beyond what he might assert privately with Brienne, just as she would have no real influence on his role as Warden of the West. The only thing left to do is for Jaime to formally ask her father for her hand in marriage, and he had insisted on visiting Tarth in person to do so. It’s a recommended practice, but not a mandatory one—he could have asked for her hand via raven, assuming all parties agree to the match—but perhaps Jaime wished to play the dutiful son, Brienne reasons. She can come up with no other explanation. 

Jaime doesn’t come for another moon, and Tarth feels so utterly unchanged during that time that she starts to wonder if she’d hallucinated everything. Everything from the moment she’d laid eyes on the Wildfire swatch, or even earlier. What had she agreed to, back at Casterly Rock, in Jaime’s chambers awash with the sun’s dying light? Nothing, maybe. Maybe moons would pass, and she would never see Jaime Lannister again. Another betrothal, failed, and there would no longer be thoughts of Wildfire, and the Scale, and the Green Room.

He comes. She is there to receive him at the docks, alongside her father. Jaime has a slightly stunned expression on his face when he sees her, which she suspects is because she had been made to wear a dress. Septa Roelle has little control over Brienne anymore, but she had insisted to Lord Selwyn that dressing appropriately was the bare minimum Brienne could do in introducing her prospective husband to her father. It made no sense to Brienne, especially considering Jaime had already seen her without any clothes on at all, but she couldn’t possibly inform her septa or her father about that. So she’d relented, if only to keep the peace. And now she’s in a blue dress, with sleeves down to her forearms and skirts down to her calves, and a square neckline cut far too low for her liking (which was anything lower than her collarbone, really—it only emphasises the broadness of her shoulders).

Lord Selwyn welcomes Jaime with warm exuberance, but Brienne can only bunch her fingers in the fabric of her skirt to stop herself from fidgeting. She hasn’t seen Jaime in four weeks, and knew him for even less time. Yet, he will almost assuredly be her husband.

“I’m sorry it’s taken so long,” Jaime says to her in a low voice, as they follow her father towards the family car, a beat-up old thing that is one of only three motor vehicles on the island. “I hope you’ve been well.”

“I have. And you?”

“Convincing my father I’ve turned over a new leaf. I think he’s buying it.” His eyes dart towards her skirts. “You look different.”

“My septa said I should wear a dress,” she grumbles.

“You still listen to your septa at this age?”

“Sometimes listening to her is better than the alternative,” she says, thinking of a lifetime of Septa Roelle’s disparaging remarks. “I promised I would bear with this today, if I could wear my regular clothes from tomorrow.”

“Hmm. Well, I suppose the ribbon is a nice touch, even if it doesn’t suit you.”

She looks down at her dress, at the satin ribbon tied into a bow at the edge of her neckline. She’d groaned when she first saw it—it speaks of a delicacy that she most definitely doesn’t possess—but now she feels the familiar heat spreading throughout her chest. Jaime must have noticed, because he smiles.

They head towards Evenfall Hall—or rather, towards the large house next to the ruins of Evenfall Hall. Inside, Jaime pays them the requisite compliments on their home, though it is infinitely more modest than even Jaime’s rooms had been back at Casterly Rock. The man before her seems polite, and personable, and so different from the one she had met on a train less than two moons ago. Which is the act? Perhaps it’s both, or even neither. Perhaps there are two, or three, or ten versions of Jaime. 

She has the rest of her life to find out.

They’ve barely had time to settle in when Jaime requests a private meeting with Lord Selwyn, and the two men disappear into the latter’s study. Jaime emerges not long after, and announces to Brienne that it’s done.

“That was fast.”

“We’ve decided. No use in wasting time.”

“You’ll be on the next boat out, then?” she says, digging her fingernails into the flesh of her palm without quite knowing why.

He laughs. “No. I thought I’d stay a few days. Told my father I’d do an assessment of the island’s trade and resources, all that stuff.”

“An assessment?”

“Don’t worry,” he says, placing a hand on her arm. “We won’t lay any claim to Tarth, as agreed. My father just prefers that I take an interest in such matters, that’s all. Best to stay on his good side.”

Incidentally, Lord Selwyn had meant to get through some paperwork that afternoon, so any sort of assessment will have to be delayed till tomorrow. He encourages Brienne to take Jaime around the island—by bicycle, as the car is unavailable—and they set off at a gentle pace, making their way along the old roads that wind around the island at a gradual incline. It takes about an hour to reach the lookout point Brienne had in mind, which is a decent height above Evenfall Hall. The ruins, the house beside it, and the surrounding settlements are visible towards the left, but once they turn their heads over to the right, there is nothing but grass stretching out to meet rock, and the wide open sea beyond that. For people who have no ability to see Blue at all, Brienne imagines this view must seem completely uninteresting. But for her, it’s the definition of serenity. She wonders what this view must look like to Jaime, with only his forty-seven percent to go on, and is squinting at the horizon in a fruitless attempt to imagine it when he says:

“It’s so quiet here.”

She squeezes her eyes shut, and blinks them open again. “There aren’t many of us on the island to begin with,” she explains. “And most people should be at work right now.”

He grunts in acknowledgement, then falls silent. A few more moments pass before he asks: “Does this mean we’ll have some privacy?”

“I suppose,” she replies, stiffly, still staring at the horizon. _What an odd question._ “Is there something you need to discuss?”

“Not exactly.”

Brienne feels a touch on her sleeve, and turns to see Jaime’s eyes cast downwards. She follows his gaze to a circular object nested in his palm.

A circular object with a dragon carved into its cover, and small jewels where its eyes should be.

She has to clench her fists to stop herself from batting it from his hand. “What did you bring that for?” she hisses.

He shrugs. “Thought it might be nice to see the true colour of the sea.”

“You brought it for _sightseeing_?”

“This _is_ the Sapphire Isle.” He lifts a finger and taps the corner of one eye. “And I’m only operating on forty-seven percent blue here.”

“But it’s—it’s _dangerous_!”

Jaime gives her a wry smile. “Only if we look at it too often, or reveal it to anyone. Neither of which we’ll be doing.” He nudges her with an elbow. “Come on, Blue. Aren’t you curious?”

Of course she is.

“I know you can see most of this, with all your _eighty-six percent_ ,” he teases, when she doesn’t answer, “but you’ll get to see green. _Real_ green. Or—” he points towards some shrubbery a little further off— “those flowers on the bushes over there. They’re red, you know.”

Brienne can only stay quiet at first. It’s so desperately tempting. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see what her island _really_ looks like, and on such a beautiful day? She looks over her shoulder to make sure there isn’t anyone coming up the road—they can’t take the chance that some young Grey would choose today to go exploring—then whispers: “Alright. But not here.”

She motions for him to get back on his bicycle, and they head a little further up the road until she sees a grassy knoll that should be able to conceal them from any passersby. They wheel their bicycles off the road and around the knoll, then rest them against the gentle slope.

“Ready?” Jaime asks, and she nods.

Soon, her vision is white, and the message is playing in her head again. She’s startled by how much of it she remembers, considering she’s only heard it once. But she supposes that experience isn’t something one would forget so easily. _If you consent, blink three times for reconfiguration_ , she hears, and there’s a split second where she feels, all of a sudden, afraid of what she’ll see. Afraid that the true colours of her island will disappoint her, or scare her.

They don’t.

She notices the wildflowers first, yellow and pink and white amidst the green blades of grass at her feet. She hadn’t realised that they were all sorts of different colours, and it’s so delightful she almost falls backwards in shock. Instead, she crouches down and lets her fingers brush across the petals, unable to believe that these are the same flowers she’s seen in these fields all her life. Then, she lifts her eyes to follow the grass as it leads towards the cliff’s edge, and—

The sea. The way its blues vary from light, to dark, to light again; the gentle motion of its waves; the sunlight glinting on its surface. 

The sky above.

She finds herself walking a few paces forward, as if the horizon is pulling her towards it. She’d considered herself lucky to be able to see the amount of blue that she does, but that fourteen percent extra—it makes all the difference in the world. It’s so overwhelming, and yet so—so _right_.

 _Fuck_ , she thinks, just as she’d said the first time she’d peeked at Wildfire, back at Casterly Rock. There is nothing more beautiful than this.

Unexpectedly, Brienne feels a hand slip into hers. She doesn’t think much of it at first—they’re two people, promised to each other, experiencing something magical together—but she likes that it’s Jaime’s right, with its two missing fingers. That he would trust her enough to let her hold it. Then, she feels him tug on her hand. She turns back to face him and—

 _fuck_. 

She’s seen him in full colour once before, but only indoors, and by the orange light of the setting sun. She had thought him beautiful then, glowing, but now—now she can see his hair is… _golden_ , must be the word for it, though it’s nothing at all like the crass Synthetic version of the colour. His eyes are—are there even words to describe them? She searches through her memory for all the different names and shades of Synthetic greens, and eventually settles on _emerald_. That is the closest she can get to describing it, and it still doesn’t feel like enough. What is the sense, in the end, of using words to describe colour?

Jaime is grinning now, for some reason, and he is raising his left hand towards her—towards her _face_. Brienne wrings her hand from his right instinctively, and stumbles backwards. “What are you doing?” she demands, as the grin disappears from his face.

“I’m sorry. It’s just—it’s nice to see your eyes again. They look much nicer in daylight.”

“Oh, well—alright,” she says stupidly. She can already feel the heat spreading across her cheeks—the heat that Jaime could see even without the help of the Wildfire—and she shields her face with her hands.

“You don’t have to do that.”

She blushes harder. “You can see it.”

“And?”

“It’s—it’s _embarrassing_.” 

“I don’t know.” He waves his hand in the air, just in front of her face. “It’s quite charming, with the freckles. Gives you a sort of… glow.” 

She doesn’t particularly want to glow, and especially not glow _red_. Right now, she wants to turn green and dissolve into the grass, never to be seen again. But Jaime is moving his hand towards her once more, and once more she takes a step back.

“Am I… not allowed to touch you?” he asks, knitting his brow.

“It’s not…” _He’ll be my husband._ “I’m just not used to—”

“We’re still promised to each other, aren’t we?”

“Yes. But—” It’s meant to be a convenient arrangement, isn’t it? An advantageous position?

“We’d have to touch at some point.”

“I suppose.” _There must be heirs_ , Lord Tywin had said, as Jaime had predicted. _A son for Casterly Rock_ —she still isn’t sure why a son specifically, when the line of succession is determined by perception— _and you may have one for Tarth as well._ But surely heirs are made in the marriage bed, after the maester has shown her an ovulation swatch. That is what she’d always been taught.

Jaime takes a step towards her, and lifts his hand again. “Brienne—please, can I—”

Her feet are rooted to the spot, but she leans away from him, as far as she can without falling over. “Can you… what?”

“Can I kiss you?”

Her cheeks are burning. _It must be the Wildfire,_ she thinks, though she doesn’t remember this burning from the first time around. Her neck, her chest—they’re burning too, and she is too afraid to look down and see what her exposed skin must look like in this ridiculous dress, with its neckline cut far too low for her liking. She can’t think of anything else to say in response besides, “Why?”

“Because your eyes are very blue,” he replies, as if it should be obvious to her. “And your lips are very pink. And it’s making me want to kiss you.”

It sounds so simple. It sounds like he’s only thought to consider it _now_ , now that he can see her in full colour, and in the bright light of day, set against the sapphire sea. _It’s the Wildfire talking_ , she thinks, even as she finds herself replying, “Very well then.”

Perhaps _that_ is the Wildfire talking too. His eyes do look very green, after all. His lips—well. She can’t really say what colour they are, because she can’t see them right now. Kissing seems a strange activity to pick when one has a limited amount of time to see in full colour, but she can’t quite think of this as a waste. Her eyelids are fluttering shut, and all she can see is the warm orange of skin made luminescent by the sun. Or maybe that is the colour of this kiss. A first kiss on a beautiful day, with the fresh smell of grass, the sounds of the waves crashing on the shore in the distance, the salt in the breeze as it has its way with her hair, which in turns tickles her cheek. 

The softness of Jaime’s lips on hers.

The length of time.

Her arms winding around his neck; his hands wandering down her back, to her waist, to her… 

She pulls away, and opens her eyes. “Jaime,” she breathes, and she’d meant for it to sound disapproving, but instead it sounds—

“Please,” he says again. “I’ve dreamed of this. Of you.”

That’s impossible. It must be the Wildfire talking. All that colour—it must get to your head, leave you eternally dissatisfied with that mere thirty minutes of vision, leave you wanting _more_ , wanting things you wouldn’t otherwise want at all. It’s the Wildfire that makes her believe him anyway, that makes her nod her consent. It’s the Wildfire that makes Jaime kiss his way down her neck, that makes him pull at the ribbon at her chest, that makes him gather up her skirt. It’s the Wildfire that makes her glad, for the only time in her life, that she had been made to wear a dress. It’s the Wildfire that stops her from recoiling when Jaime reaches his fingers between her legs, that permits her to whimper at his touch. It’s the Wildfire that fills her with the courage to sink down onto the grass, to watch as Jaime kneels before her, to keep watching as he pushes down his pants and smallclothes, just far enough.

It’s the Wildfire that makes it feel so good.

A first kiss. And a first time.

There is nothing more beautiful than this.

Later, they lie on the grass at the tail end of that precious thirty minutes, their breaths falling out of sync as the colour begins to fade.

“I’m sorry,” Jaime says. “I don’t know what came over me.”

The words sting, but she isn’t sure why. He will be her husband, and they would have had to do this at some point, with or without the Wildfire. Why should it matter if he’s sorry now?

“It’s fine,” she replies, staring at the sky as it dulls.

He sits up, and reaches for the ribbon on her dress, hanging loose. “Just… fine?” he asks, tracing a line across her chest with the end of the ribbon. “I thought it was quite enjoyable. For both of us.”

First he says _I’ve dreamed of you_ , then he says he’s _sorry_ , now he says it was _enjoyable_. It’s _confusing_ , is what it is. She sits up too, and pushes his hand away so she can make herself presentable again. “Sure,” she murmurs, as she fumbles with her ribbon. “I guess something came over me too.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No.” There is nothing wrong with the truth. She gives him a tight-lipped smile as she says, “It was good.”

They speak little on the way back to Evenfall Hall, and even less at dinner. Her father—still very excited by the fact that he will be wedding his daughter to a Purple—carries the conversation with Jaime easily. Jaime keeps sending strange looks her way, though. Even smiles at her a few times.

_He was inside me._

_He was sorry for it._

_It must have been the Wildfire._

They retire to their respective chambers with no more than a simple good night.

The next day is, thankfully, dress-free. Brienne puts on a light blue men’s button down shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, tucks it into a pair of dark trousers, and throws on her leather work boots. When she looks in the mirror, she doesn’t think of Jaime lifting her skirt yesterday, and all that happened beneath the fabric. Today, she has to accompany her father to his routine weekly meeting with the appointed representatives of the Greys, and an inspection of a recent shipment of scrap colour. They’ve never believed in dressing formally for these tasks.

At breakfast—during which Jaime continues to give her the strange looks and smiles he had given her at dinner yesterday—her father suggests that Jaime join them as well, so that he could be introduced to some of the smallfolk as the future consort of the heir to Evenfall Hall. Her father drives, with Jaime in the passenger seat up front, so she has no opportunity to exchange words with Jaime for the entire journey. Not that there’s anything to say about what happened the day before. It must have been the Wildfire.

During the meeting with the Greys, Brienne stands to the side with Jaime, observing her father as he offers advice and instruction. She feels horribly aware of Jaime standing far too close to her—of his arm along her arm, and his thigh along her thigh. He makes no attempt to shift away.

“Your father,” Jaime whispers into her ear. “He treats the Greys well.”

“Yes,” Brienne says, trying to ignore how she can feel his breath on her neck. “Just because we’re not encouraged to socialise, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be treated with common decency and respect.”

“There are many who would disagree with even something so unobjectionable as that.”

“Well. Those people are wrong.”

“I think so too,” Jaime says, with a low chuckle she can feel deep in her belly. “By the way. You look nice today.”

“It’s just what I wear most days,” she tells him, with some exasperation in her voice. Why would he say something like _that_? About a men’s shirt, and dark trousers, and leather work boots? About _her_? 

“It’s new to me,” he replies, and doesn’t speak further.

After lunch, her father gives them leave to use the car for the rest of the afternoon, so they can go some distance further than they did yesterday. Brienne drives, this time, with Jaime in the passenger seat beside her. Once they drop her father off, and watch him head into the house, Jaime asks, “So where are we going today?”

“I suppose we can go to the other end of the island.”

“I assume we’ll have privacy there too.”

 _Again?_ “Jaime—we’re not supposed to look at it more than once a week.”

“Look at what?”

She frowns. “The Wildfire,” she says, lowering her voice though they’re alone in this car. “What else did you want privacy for?”

“I didn’t bring it with me today.”

“Oh. Then what—”

“Do you not remember what we—”

“Of course I remember,” she snaps. “I just thought—”

_I just thought you were sorry that it happened._

Jaime puts a hand on her thigh, and his touch seems to burn right through the fabric of her trousers. “I’m pretty sure Wildfire isn’t necessary for that.”

Isn’t it? Wasn’t it the Wildfire that had made them do what they did yesterday, on the grass?

“Unless…” Jaime continues, quietly, “unless it was necessary for _you_.”

Maybe it was. Maybe she was still feeling its effects last night, in her bed, when she couldn’t sleep because she was consumed with thoughts of Jaime, of Jaime buried inside her on the grass, and she had reached her fingers between her thighs just as he had done so with _his_ fingers that afternoon, and brought herself to a frustratingly unsatisfying peak.

“I thought it made it easier for _you_ ,” she says, her hands gripping the steering wheel, her eyes looking straight ahead.

“It made it easier to _ask_ ,” he replies, giving her thigh a squeeze. “But the rest of it—no.”

 _No?_ “You said you were _sorry_.”

“I meant I was sorry for being _impatient_. I’m not sorry that it happened.”

It wasn’t the Wildfire, then. 

Not _just_ the Wildfire, anyway.

They make the rest of the drive in silence, Jaime’s hand still resting on her thigh. Without really being aware of it, Brienne finds herself heading towards a place she’d never thought she’d share with anyone. She doesn’t quite know what compels her to their destination—she can’t blame the Wildfire anymore—but they’re three-quarters of the way there before she fully realises where she’s going. Eventually, she turns up a secluded road, drives until they get to a dead end.

“It’s a bit of a walk,” she mumbles, as they get out of the car.

“We have time,” Jaime replies. “Don’t we?”

“Yes,” she says, without looking at him.

She leads him through the trees, along a path she’d walked so many times before. She can already hear the rush of the water not too far off. Soon, they arrive at a clearing; at the other end of it is a small waterfall that empties into a spring.

“I… I come here when I want to be alone,” she says. “To swim, or bathe. It’s more…”

“Private?” he suggests, the word heavy with connotation.

She nods.

“It’s lovely. I would have brought a change of smallclothes if I’d known—”

“Oh.” She stares at the ground. “I usually—”

“ _Oh_.”

“Like I said. I come here to—to be alone.”

She’s regretting this already. She’d brought him all the way here, and she can’t blame the Wildfire for this decision. It was her realisation that the Wildfire _wasn’t_ all to blame for yesterday; that maybe Jaime hadn’t lied when he’d told her he’d dreamed of her.

Yesterday—they’d barely removed any of their clothes yesterday.

She wants to turn back, and she would, except Jaime is already making his way towards the spring, and unbuttoning his shirt along the way. _You’ve seen him naked already_ , she reminds herself, thinking of their time in the bath before, at Harrenhal. But she’d cast her eyes away back then, and had barely seen any of him before he’d sank into the water. Back then, his body had been covered in grime. Back then, she hadn’t known the gold of his hair, the green of his eyes, the bronze of his skin. She can’t see any of that now, but she remembers it so clearly from yesterday, and the memory is more than enough.

She gathers the strength to walk after him, to keep walking even as he untucks his shirt and shrugs it off his shoulders. To walk closer. To reach out and trace the ripple of his muscles down his back. He turns to face her, brings his hands to her top button, asks for permission with his eyes. She gives that permission with hers. There is nothing beneath her shirt—it’s a thick enough material that she could go without, even if her breasts were anything to speak of—and Jaime runs his fingers over her bare nipples even before he’s done unbuttoning.

“No,” he says, and she freezes— _he doesn’t want to do this anymore?_ —until he adds: “I don’t think we’ll be needing the Wildfire.”

By some miracle, they resist going any further than touches until they’re both naked and in the water. They resist doing much more than swimming and bathing for a little while longer, but only a little while, because soon his lips are on hers; soon his fingers are between her thighs again; soon her hand reaches down to return the favour; soon even this isn’t enough, and _isn’t this rock just the perfect height for you to sit on, Brienne?_ She isn’t sure why she would want to do that, until she does, and Jaime tells her to shift towards the edge and then he has his _mouth on her_ , and no, _fuck_ , they don’t need any fucking Wildfire for _this_.

He takes her on the grass, later, just as he’d taken her on the grass yesterday. As she looks up at the sky, and at Jaime moving above her, all she can think of is how lucky she is. There is no love between them now, and there will likely be no love between them when they do marry, and who knows if there will be love between them years down the road, once she’s birthed two children or more. But there is desire between them at least, and there is truth, and she has seen all the colours of the world with Jaime by her side, even if only for thirty minutes at a time. If this is the closest she will ever get to happiness, then so be it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I write this entire fic so that Jaime and Brienne could bang while tripping on colour in the meadows of Tarth? Yes. I did.


	5. Once in a Blue Moon

Jaime stays only a week on Tarth in all, departing for King’s Landing thereafter to meet with his family. He gives Brienne no more than a chaste kiss on the cheek at the docks, then whispers in her ear that he looks forward to seeing her again. His tone implies that he means to see her in the way he had seen her that morning, when they’d left the house early on the pretext of going for a walk among the ruins of the old castle. They’d walked, yes—and kissed, and then some.

Her cheeks are still warm when his vessel is no more than a speck on the water.

A few days later, her father receives a raven from Lord Tywin to confirm the match. His letter states that the wedding will take place in King’s Landing in one moon’s time. The ceremony will not be large or elaborate—perhaps Lord Tywin doesn’t wish to draw attention to the years-long delay of his son’s marriage—but they will wed at the Great Sept nonetheless, and he expects both Brienne and her father in three weeks for the necessary introductions and preparations. They will be welcome at the Lannister residence.

A few days after that, another raven arrives. This time, the letter is addressed to Brienne in Jaime’s untidy scrawl. She doesn’t open it until she is alone in her room, and when she finally does, the letter is so rife with misspellings that she suspects that it must be written in some kind of code. If it isn’t, then what Jaime means to say is this:

> _Blue—_
> 
> _I dreamed of you again last night_. _The light was so dim that I could scarcely see you at first, until a longsword appeared in your hands and took flame, burning silvery blue. In that light you could almost be a knight, like you’d hoped. Except for the fact that you were, well, naked._ (Brienne’s eyes widen.) _You were tall and strong as I remember, yet it seemed to me that you had more of a woman’s shape. Perhaps that is what my body remembers of yours. Anyway, I believe you were saying something about having sworn an oath to keep me safe, which I do appreciate, even if it was a figment of my own imagination._
> 
> _Of course, I woke up hard_ (her eyes widen further), _an inconvenient habit that my cock seems to have acquired since I first had you in the fields of Tarth. Or maybe even since we shared a bath at Harrenhal, though we didn’t end that night on the best of terms. It’s a shame I only have my hand and my memories to deal with this problem. Would much rather have you in bed with me—it seems we fucked everywhere except in a bed in my week on Tarth—but I suppose I shall have to wait a couple more weeks for that._
> 
> _—Jaime_

Brienne reads the letter again and again, even finds a blank piece of paper and writes out every mistake to see if he really _had_ hidden some secret message in there, but she can’t make heads or tails of her scribblings. Still, she reads his words every night before she goes to bed, and every morning when she wakes, and every chance she gets in between until she finds she’s committed it to memory. _I dreamed of you again last night_. She dreams of him too, though she doesn’t want to tell him so. What if he _had_ written it in code, and she just couldn’t understand it? She wouldn’t be able to bear the embarrassment of replying to a letter like that with equal enthusiasm, if Jaime hadn’t meant her to take his words as written. Instead, after five days, she sends the following reply:

> _Dear Jaime,_
> 
> _Thank you for your letter. I am thinking of you as well and look forward to seeing you again in King’s Landing._
> 
> _Best regards,_
> 
> _Brienne_

There are no more ravens after that, no letters received or sent. It isn’t long before she’s in King’s Landing with her father, sitting in the parlour of the palatial Lannister mansion, across from Lord Tywin and Jaime. Next to Jaime is his sister Cersei, her beauty only emphasising the haughty derision in her eyes; Brienne would think the twins mirror images if not for that. Then there’s Tyrion, half his brother’s height and in a chair of his own, observing Brienne with something like fascination. It is a strange picture, the four of them. Seeing her future husband like this, framed by his family, Brienne thinks this must be another Jaime now—not Jaime of the train, or the bathhouse, or Tarth, or even of their time at Casterly Rock. He is a Lannister, now. A Purple. The eventual head of his House.

“After all this time, Jaime,” Cersei says, without really acknowledging Brienne at all. “This is whom you have chosen to marry.”

Cersei’s voice drips with contempt, and Brienne feels herself shrinking beneath her future good-sister’s critical gaze. “Yes,” Jaime simply replies. “And?”

“ _And?_ ” Cersei echoes incredulously. “Were you blindfolded throughout your courtship, brother?”

“Come now, sister,” Tyrion cuts in, before either Jaime or her father can leap to her defence. “We are in the presence of the Evenstar and his heir. There are some in this room who have no titles to speak of.” He turns to Brienne, ignoring the flash of anger in Cersei’s eyes. “I think you’re majestic. My nephews and nieces shall tower over me from the cradle.”

Painfully aware that all four people in front of her can see a significant amount of Red, Brienne tries her best to control her blush—the result of Cersei’s palpable scorn, of Tyrion’s open appreciation, even of Jaime’s wordless reassurance. She wishes Jaime was sitting beside her, not across from her. She might dare to hold his hand for strength.

“Enough,” Lord Tywin thunders. “I will not have my children turn this alliance into a mockery.” He looks to the servants standing by the door. “Please show Lord Selwyn and Lady Brienne to their rooms.”

And so, they depart the parlour, both a little dazed from their first encounter with so many Lannisters at once. Brienne’s room and her father’s are in the same wing, but the wing is so large that they might as well be at opposite ends of the house. Lord Selwyn gives her a conciliatory smile when they part, and she can only smile weakly back. She made this choice. She will marry Jaime Lannister, and keep his secrets, and bear his children—no matter how uncomfortable his family makes her.

Her room has windows this time, fortunately. It’s bright and airy, if slightly less opulent than her chambers back at Casterly Rock, and everything that could be blue here is blue, down to the drapes and even the bedding. She is just wondering if Jaime had chosen it specially for her when he bursts into the room.

“Your reply to my letter was disappointingly short,” he says, once he’s closed the door. Slowly, deliberately, he turns the key in the lock.

“You could have knocked. I might have been—”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before, Blue.” He takes one step towards her, then another. “How did it go again? _Thank you for your letter. I am thinking of you as well_ —that was good to know— _and look forward to seeing you again in King’s Landing_.”

“I believe I also ended it with, _Best regards_ ,” she says, backing away as Jaime approaches.

“You did. Very _respectable_. A very proper response to my very sincere confession.”

“It wasn’t—” She bites her lip. “Alright. The truth is—I was afraid it might have been in—in _code_.”

He frowns. “Code?”

“There were… mistakes. I thought you might have been meaning to tell me something else. About—” she lowers her voice— “your _other activities_.”

“Oh.” Jaime shrugs. “No. I’m just a terrible writer.”

“So… you meant what you said. About the dream, and the… the…”

 _Of course,_ she remembers, _I woke up hard._

“I did.”

He is standing right before her now, and there’s something about the look in his eyes that makes her feel two feet shorter, though she should have two inches on him.

That’s when she realises she’s sitting on the edge of the bed.

 _Would much rather have you in bed with me_ , he’d written.

It’s very warm in this room. Isn’t it very warm in this room?

“What would you have said,” Jaime says, reaching for her collar, “if you hadn’t thought it was in code?”

“N-now?” she whispers, ignoring his question. “Someone will come looking, surely.”

“I don’t think we’ll be needed for a couple of hours.” He unfastens one button, then three. “My father is sending seamstresses over later, to fit you for your gown.”

“I’ll look ridiculous,” she says, her hands reaching for his belt. “Can’t I marry you in a suit?”

“I wouldn’t mind, but my father would.” He leans down to kiss her. “Tell me,” he breathes on her lips. “Would you have told me of your dreams?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” she lies, pulling his shirt out from his trousers.

“Your fantasies, then. You didn’t—” he reaches for her right hand, and folds her last two fingers down so that it mirrors his own— “bring your fingers to your cunt, just like this. And imagine it was me?”

She pushes his hand away, the Forbidden Word ringing in her ears. “I’ll snitch if you say that word again.”

“To whom, my father?” Jaime laughs. “Cuntcuntcuntcuntcunt. That’s, what—thirty merits, including the first one? Will you tell him what we were doing when I said it?”

“You’re awful.”

“And you’re marrying me.”

“I’m—”

There’s a knock at the door.

“Ignore it,” Jaime says into the crook of her neck.

Again, the person knocks.

“Jaime—stop, I need to—”

Brienne slips out from under him, and he collapses face first on her bed with a groan. She buttons up her blouse, hurries to the mirror to neaten her hair as best she can, then runs over to the door and opens it just wide enough.

“My brother isn’t in his rooms,” Tyrion says, with a smug expression that tells her he knows exactly where Jaime is right now. “Will you pass on a message for me, Lady Brienne?”

“Um.” She darts her eyes to her bed, where Jaime is silently gesturing for her to send Tyrion away. “If I see him.”

“Tell him we’ll be meeting tonight, usual place and time. You’re welcome to join us too.”

“For…?”

“He’ll know,” Tyrion says, without elaborating further, and she nods her understanding. “By the way,” he continues, “I meant no disrespect, just now. I really do think you’re magnificent.”

She’s so surprised by this that her _thank you_ comes out as a question.

“You’re welcome. I’ll see you this evening.” Then, to her alarm, Tyrion raises his voice and calls, “Goodbye, Jaime!”

“Fuck off, brother!” Jaime calls back, and Brienne slams the door closed.

“Jaime! Shh!”

“Relax, Blue.”

“My father is down the hall!” she says, striding over to the bed.

Jaime sits back up. “You have a three-room buffer. I made sure of it.”

“That’s not the point. And if you think I’m going to be making any— _noise_ —”

He reaches for her wrist, and pulls her towards him. “If you don’t, I’ll make it for you. You know what our house words are. _Hear me_ —”

“Please don’t,” she shudders, as Jaime works at the buttons of her blouse again. “By the way, Tyrion said there’ll be a meeting this evening. Same place and time.”

“Alright.” He gathers up her skirt. “Do you want to come? I mean,” he smirks, “come out with us tonight.”

She rolls her eyes. “If you want me to.”

“It’s nothing official,” he says, lazily caressing the backs of her thighs. “We’re just going to the club.”

“The club?”

“It’s where… like-minded people gather. But it’s your choice. If you don’t want to be involved—”

Brienne holds his face between her hands. “I’ll go,” she promises, and brings her lips to his.

It’s an odd thing, for her presence to be wanted by another person. By _Jaime_. She’s so unaccustomed to it that she forgets it every time they part. Those two weeks at the Rock—when his face would brighten at breakfast each morning—seemed to dissipate in the weeks after. Then, his days on Tarth, the hunger in his eyes, his touch—after he’d departed, all of that seemed nothing more than the product of an overactive imagination. The way he spoke of her in his letter felt incongruous too—his dreams; the fact that he thought of her as he took himself in hand; his wish to have her in his bed. And here—how he’d come to her room almost as soon as they had the chance to be alone, then invited her along for this meeting too. There had been something in his voice when he asked; something hopeful, yearning, indecipherable. It isn’t her body he wants this evening, and yet—

It is such an odd thing.

The seamstresses arrive later that afternoon, and the experience is predictably unpleasant. Brienne doesn’t know if it is made more or less so by Jaime’s insistence on being present for the whole affair. The women tut over her as if each part of her body is yet one more burden to accommodate, each measurement a shock that requires further recalculation. She’d anticipated all of this, endured all its variants before, but Jaime picks up on every unkindness. And, unlike her, he is one to make his displeasure and demands known. In the end, it will probably be for the better—the gown will suit her more with Jaime’s recommendations—but the whole affair leaves her feeling rather exposed, not least because it is clear that Jaime has developed a sort of… familiarity, with her body. It’s a familiarity that is not, perhaps, what is to be expected of her betrothed a week _prior_ to their wedding.

In the evening, they tolerate dinner with a whole host of tiresome Lannisters who have descended upon the capital for the wedding, despite Lord Tywin’s supposed preference for a quiet ceremony. Cersei is as condescending as she was a few hours before, worse still for coddling her unruly son Joffrey, but at least they are joined by Jaime’s Aunt Genna, a boisterous woman who openly expresses her delight with Brienne’s existence, and gets along particularly well with Lord Selwyn. Brienne would feel worse about leaving her father behind if not for Aunt Genna, who is still laughing with him when Brienne, Jaime, and Tyrion slip out of the mansion around ten to head to the club.

This club, it turns out, has to be accessed via an establishment called Chataya’s. It’s only when they enter that Brienne realises what kind of establishment Chataya’s actually is. She didn’t think such places still existed; its presence must break a hundred rules or more. But Tyrion seems friendly with the women here— _very_ friendly—and these women are casting appreciative glances towards Jaime too. Brienne, whose right arm is already wound tightly around Jaime’s left, draws herself closer to him when she notices. What is this feeling in her belly? Possessiveness? Brienne Tarth, feeling possessive over a man?

“What’s wrong?” Jaime whispers.

“They’re… _looking_ ,” she says.

“Mm. You’re new.”

 _What is he—_ “Me?”

“Is that so shocking?”

“Perhaps they think I’m a man,” she sighs.

“Or perhaps not.” He brings his right hand over hers where it grips his elbow. “Or… they could be looking at us, together.”

By the time she can fully comprehend the implications of Jaime’s statement, they’re up a flight of stairs and heading down a long corridor. At the end of the corridor is an ornately decorated room with a canopied bed, and a large wardrobe in the corner. Jaime opens the wardrobe to reveal that it is empty, then pushes the back panel aside. Behind it is a ladder that leads down below the street to a tunnel, which eventually ends at a door, which opens into what appears to be the servants’ quarters of an entirely different house. Brienne can already hear the muffled sounds of music and conversation, and then they’re down another staircase and whispering a password through a slot in the door and being asked to deposit their colour badges before they can be shown to their booth. There’s a fear and a thrill that runs through her as she removes the pin from the lapel of her coat. Here, she isn’t a Blue, and Jaime isn’t a Purple, and every person they pass and greet could be Grey for all she knows. Everyone here is non-hued together, from the patrons to the servers to the musicians on the stage—a collective rejection of the Chromatic Hierarchy, if only within the walls of this room.

They are seated at a small circular booth in the corner, Brienne nestled into Jaime’s right and Tyrion on his left, and she realises they can see almost everyone in the club from where they are. All of them seem fairly young—no one looks beyond thirty-five, while the youngest can’t be older than sixteen—and some even look vaguely familiar. But before she can figure out where she’s seen them before, a young woman with dark hair and dark eyes plants herself beside Tyrion and meets his lips with an ardour that makes Brienne avert her eyes. Eventually, Tyrion introduces her as his partner, Shae, while Jaime introduces Brienne as his betrothed.

“I heard,” Shae says, with a twinkle in her eye. “Are you a new recruit too?”

“Oh, I’m just—here for—” For what? For Jaime? “Jaime asked if I wanted to,” Brienne finishes awkwardly.

“That’s sweet,” smiles Shae, reaching across the table to pat her on the hand. “Well, it’s very nice to meet you. And congratulations in advance. I’m sorry I can’t be at the wedding.”

“Why not?” Brienne says in surprise.

Both Shae and Tyrion laugh. “My father wouldn’t allow it,” Tyrion answers. Then, he lowers his voice and whispers theatrically, “She’s a _Grey_.”

“I am,” Shae confirms, retracting her hand from Brienne’s and sliding her arms around Tyrion. “Among other objectionable things.”

“But perhaps none as objectionable as me,” Tyrion quips.

Jaime had told her some of Lord Tywin’s hatred for his youngest son, but Brienne is still taken aback by Tyrion’s statement, and the casualness with which he’d said it. “Oh… I—I’m sure that isn’t—”

“We have the evidence,” Tyrion announces, with a feigned solemnity. “I am indeed most objectionable.”

“It’s Tyrion who should be Lord, by right,” Jaime cuts in. “I don’t think I’ve told you that, have I?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ninety-eight percent red, sixty-four percent Blue.” Tyrion catches a server’s eye, and signals for wine to be brought to the table. “Which would make me—”

“Eighty-one percent Purple.” Brienne knits her brow. That’s far above Jaime’s seventy percent. “So why—”

“My father despises me,” Tyrion declares, as if it’s the most fundamental principle of the known world.

Brienne hadn’t imagined Lord Tywin would allow those feelings to supersede the Chromatic Hierarchy. “But the rules—”

“—are arbitrary anyway. He also picked Jaime over Cersei, even though she’s older and they have the exact same score. Now she’s banking on Joffrey to succeed as Lord Paramount of the Stormlands. Stannis Baratheon has a daughter, but it’s pretty likely that Joffrey will be the better perceptor.”

“Unfortunately,” Jaime grumbles. “I don’t care how much growing up he does in the next ten years, that boy shouldn’t serve on the Council.”

Brienne thinks of her brief encounters with her future nephew earlier that evening, and has to agree with Jaime. Self-involved, with a cruel streak that will only be encouraged by his overindulgent mother, she can’t imagine what Joffrey will do if granted a position of power.

“Well, there are the bastards,” Tyrion muses.

“The bastards?” she asks.

“Robert’s illegitimate children. All rumour, of course, but it’ll certainly get very complicated if mysterious Purples pop up in the middle of nowhere in the next decade or so, won’t it?”

“You know our sister will do anything to stop them from threatening Joffrey’s birthright,” Jaime says, with too much emphasis on _anything_ for Brienne’s liking.

“If she succeeds,” Tyrion declares with a grin, “then I suppose we’ll just have to dismantle the great Ultraviolet Council before Joffrey grows up, won’t we?”

Before Brienne can fully absorb Tyrion’s words, a flagon and four cups are set down on the table. When the server departs, Brienne lowers her voice and asks, “What do you mean— _dismantle the great Ultraviolet Council_?”

“Well, we’re still gathering the troops, so to speak,” Tyrion says, filling the cups to the brim with wine. “But that’s the lofty goal—if there is to be a Council, it shouldn’t be determined by hue or perception.”

“No Chromatic Hierarchy bullshit,” Jaime chimes in, handing Brienne a cup and taking one for himself.

“Indeed.” Tyrion takes a long swig of his wine. “Why do us Lannisters get to be Purple, while Shae is a Grey and you’re Blue? What if Shae would make a great leader—”

“I wouldn’t,” Shae interjects.

“Nevertheless,” Tyrion continues, wrapping an arm around Shae’s waist, “why should a Grey be prevented from serving on the Council? Or a Blue like yourself? Just because of this nebulous thing called _perception_. We know that it’s possible for us to—Jaime showed you, right?”

Brienne nods; he must be referring to the Wildfire. Unbidden, her thoughts go to the fields of Tarth, then to the sensation of Jaime’s hand making its way up her thigh under the table. She has to stop it with her own hand before it can travel any further.

“Well,” Tyrion says, looking at her curiously. “My theory is, the seven different strata—it’s all… _manufactured_ , somehow. Or was, at some point a long time ago. A system of classification, so that everyone knows their place.” He takes another sip. “But the truth is, deep inside our brains, _everyone has that ability to see colour_.”

Brienne sucks in a breath. “You really think so?”

“I do. I even wonder if we could see more _light_. With the Wildfire, everything seems brighter. Perhaps, once upon a time, we didn’t think the night was so full of terrors. It’s awfully convenient, isn’t it—to make sure everyone keeps to the light? To control us in that way?”

She’s never thought about it like that before—how could something seem so inconceivable, yet so logical at the same time? Seeing colour, seeing more light? “How do we know it isn’t just something that can be, I don’t know, unlocked temporarily?”

“That implies it was _locked in the first place_.” Tyrion reaches for the flagon to refill his cup again, though Brienne hasn’t even had a taste of the wine herself. “I’d always wondered about the old portraits, from hundreds of years ago. How large their pupils are. Have you ever noticed that?”

“I always thought it was just—I don’t know, the style.”

“Remember what happened,” Jaime reminds her. “How my eyes looked once we’d—what’s the word they used?— _reconfigured_ our vision. It resembled the old paintings far more.”

Tyrion nods vigorously. “And it’s not just paintings, it’s the old books, too—how they wrote about all the colours so freely.”

“We were always taught that they—they must have had advisors,” Brienne counters. “That perhaps they simply drew upon common knowledge.”

“I think,” Tyrion leans forward, “once upon a time, everyone could see colour. _All the time_.”

“All the time?” Brienne repeats. How is that—that can’t be possible. “That sounds—”

“Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?” Shae exhales dreamily.

“Or… intoxicating,” Brienne says.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Jaime chuckles into his wine.

She warms, and chases memories of Tarth from her mind. “In doses, it could be wonderful, but _all the time_?”

“You wouldn’t think of it as anything other than normal, would you?” Tyrion points out. “If you could always see it.”

“I suppose not.”

“And if the ability is locked somewhere in our brains,” Tyrion muses, “I wonder what would happen if we could find a way to reverse it. The Chromatic Hierarchy would be irrelevant.”

She can’t even imagine it. “ _Anarchy without hierarchy_ ,” she murmurs, thinking of a quote from The Wheel.

“Or freedom,” Jaime suggests. “Instead of anarchy.”

 _Or freedom._ Brienne brings her wine to her lips, looks around the club as she does so. “These people,” she asks, setting down her cup, “they’ve all peeked? At the Wildfire?”

“Not all,” Jaime says. “But some. Others are here simply because they disagree with the system on principle.”

“Shouldn’t everyone get to experience it?”

“Ideally. But there’s still so much we don’t know about the Protocol, and so much danger surrounding it.”

She nods slowly, remembering what Jaime had told her of how he’d got his hands on the Wildfire in the first place—how the man had gone mad, and had been sent to the Green Room after. She turns back to Tyrion. “And the ones who’ve seen it—do they subscribe to your theory?”

“There are different camps. For example—” Tyrion points to the middle of the room. At a table there sits a young woman, slender, with pale skin and even paler hair, long and elaborately braided. “ _She_ thinks it shouldn’t matter,” he says. “That even if we can’t reverse whatever it is that’s been done to us, it doesn’t mean the Chromatic Hierarchy should exist.”

“Who’s that?” asks Brienne.

“Daenerys, of House Targaryen,” Jaime answers, with a certain uneasiness that makes Brienne turn her head to him questioningly. “Her father was Aerys Targaryen,” he mutters, then leans in close so he can speak into her ear. “He was—I found the—the Wildfire.”

“Oh,” she says, trying to rein in her shock. The Targaryen name is familiar to Brienne, of course, being one of the Great Houses; the name Aerys, too, she remembers, though he’d died almost a decade before. He was head of their house before then, which meant he’d served on the Ultraviolet Council. “ _He_ was the one that—”

Jaime nods. “I was the—I was working for him for a couple of years after my Test,” he whispers. “To _gain exposure_ outside of the Westerlands, though my father wasn’t so happy about it. Petty Ultraviolet politics.”

“You said he went mad. Lord Aerys.”

“He was already mad by the time I’d started working for him. More so towards the end—more careless. He—he stopped hiding the compact. I was the one who reported him to—”

Right at that moment, someone walks by their table, and Jaime straightens his back. “I’ll tell you more later,” he says. “When we’re alone.”

“Oh,” Shae exclaims just then. “He’s here again.”

Brienne follows Shae’s gaze to the bar, where a beautiful man with flowing curls is currently downing his drink far too quickly. Huh—she’s seen this man somewhere before. Or he looks like someone she—

And then it hits her: “Is that… Loras Tyrell?”

“You know him?” Jaime asks.

“I was—” She stares down into her cup, praying Jaime won’t make the connection to her admission back at Casterly Rock. “I was at his—his sister’s wedding. Representing Tarth.”

“What a sham that was,” Tyrion comments. “Not to mention the—”

Brienne jerks her head up before he can complete his sentence. “A sham? Why would you say that?” _Could this have something to do with Renly’s death?_

But it isn’t about Renly’s death at all.

“Everyone knows Loras was the one Renly really wanted to marry,” Shae sighs wistfully. “And Loras is the right hue, too. But it isn’t just hue that gets in the way of marriage.”

“Really,” Brienne croaks, and swallows a large gulp of wine. It’s as if a void has just opened up inside her. She’d never thought Renly could love her—the truth about his relationship with Loras Tyrell only reinforces that impossibility—and yet the revelation still threatens to knock the wind from her lungs.

“It’s sad,” Shae keeps going. “Now that Renly’s gone, it’s not his wife that mourns, but her brother.” She props her elbows on the table, and puts her chin in her hands. “You’re lucky, the two of you. You get to marry for love.”

“No,” Brienne answers absently, still staring at Loras, “we’re not—that isn’t why—”

Suddenly, she feels a chill fall over the table. She looks across the booth to see that Shae has her hand over her mouth, and Tyrion’s raising his eyebrows as he reaches for his drink, and Jaime—

Jaime doesn’t have his hand on her thigh anymore.

The rest of the night passes in a haze, and whether it lasts five more minutes or hours, Brienne has no sense of it. It’s Loras Tyrell at the other end of the room, who’d loved Renly and whom Renly had loved; it’s the unfinished story about Aerys Targaryen; it’s Tyrion and Shae’s feeble attempts at continuing their conversation; it’s the wine getting to her, leaving her flushed and warm in the most disagreeable way.

It’s Jaime.

It’s Jaime, who will not touch her anymore. Jaime, who tenses when she tries to hook her arm around his. Jaime, who is quiet and sullen and thoroughly baffling.

Later, they collect their colour badges and head back up the stairs, past the servants’ quarters, through the tunnel, up the ladder, down the long corridor, back into Chataya’s. Tyrion and Shae decide to stay behind, and though Brienne has some vague idea of how a couple might choose to entertain themselves here, she is still too perplexed by Jaime’s abrupt change to feel any sort of embarrassment, too destabilised by all that she’s heard tonight.

She and Jaime make their way back to the Lannister residence in silence. He allows her to hold his arm as she’d done since that first morning they’d spent in Lannisport, but it’s as if the gesture has lost all its intimacy. Maybe he just needs time, she hopes, to get over whatever it is that’s on his mind. She has a lot on hers too— _Renly_ — _and Loras—_

 _Jaime._ Jaime, who’d taken his hand off her thigh.

When they arrive back at the mansion, they both stop at the foot of the stairs, linger there in the semi-darkness. Brienne waits, rolling slightly on the balls of her feet. In truth, she is waiting for—for a kiss. On her lips, her cheek, her hand, anything. She is waiting for Jaime to sneak her into his room, into his bed, with the same hunger he’d shown this afternoon. She wants to forget, for a little while, about Targaryens and Baratheons and Tyrells. She wants to forget that Jaime took his hand off her thigh.

But there is no kiss, no hunger. Eventually, Jaime says, “Goodnight, Lady Brienne,” and bows his head. He doesn’t call her Blue, not even Brienne, but _Lady Brienne_. He hasn’t called her that since the first few days of their courtship, and she can’t understand it.

“Is something wrong?” She catches his arm. “Was it something I said?”

He meets her eyes, and gives her a sort of defeated smile. “Do you remember the inn?” he asks.

“Of course. But why—”

“Do you remember what I told you, when you gave Masha your real name?”

“You mean… when you said I didn’t have to?”

“After that. After you said you might have lied.”

She thinks back to their conversation on the stairs, almost three moons ago now. “You told me I didn’t. That I seemed—honest.”

“Too honest, I believe I said.”

“Yes,” she recalls. “It was… something in my eyes.”

“Hmm.” He looks away. “Yes.”

Then, Jaime slides her hand from his arm, and walks up the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would they really be Jaime and Brienne without a generous dash of emotional ineptitude?


	6. Born in the Purple

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They’re stupid, but they figure things out.

“Tyrion,” Brienne says, as she approaches him in the library three evenings later.

Tyrion looks up from his book. “Brienne,” he acknowledges. “Going somewhere?”

“No, I—why do you ask?”

“You’ve changed since I saw you last. I assumed you were planning on going somewhere.”

She glances down at herself, and smoothes her hands down her dress—the dress she’d worn to receive Jaime on Tarth. She’d packed it just in case Lord Tywin made another comment this week about her sartorial choices, but she has other reasons for wearing it tonight. “Do you know where Jaime is?” she asks, straightening her shoulders.

Tyrion looks back down, and flips a page. “I believe he is sulking in his room.”

“Then will you be so kind as to direct me to his room, please?”

“Hmm.” He flips another page. “Now why would I do that?”

“I… need to speak with him. He’s been avoiding me for the past three days.” Even her father had noticed; he’d pulled her aside this afternoon to ask if the wedding was still going ahead. She assured him that it was, though she’s much less certain of that fact than she was three days ago.

“I wonder why,” Tyrion says, in a way that suggests he knows the answer to that question, and isn’t inclined to tell her.

“Yes, well—I’m wondering why too.”

Tyrion lifts his head again, and assesses her with his knowing gaze. “You really have no idea why he’s upset, do you?”

Brienne shakes her head. She remembers the order of events—seeing Loras Tyrell at the bar, finding out about his relationship with Renly, Shae’s strange comment, then her own refutation—but she still doesn’t understand what it was that made Jaime react in the way he did.

“My brother,” Tyrion says, “he’s had many opportunities to marry. And he’s wormed his way out of them all, until you came along.”

“He trusts me. And it was—you wanted him to—it’s good timing.”

“And that’s all it is, is it? Trust, and timing?”

“That’s what we discussed.”

Tyrion sighs, and mutters something about them being made for each other. “Fine. You better go talk to him then. And I’d recommend locking the door and throwing away the key while you’re at it.”

“Why?”

“Jaime can be… avoidant.” He tips his head thoughtfully. “Actually, he might attempt to jump out a window, if the door is inaccessible. So you should be prepared to tackle him to the ground before he does, which I’m sure you can manage.”

Tyrion’s words may have been in jest—they must have been—but as she makes her way to Jaime’s room, Brienne thinks of how he’d sidestepped betrothal after betrothal for almost ten years, at least until he felt compelled to use his position for the greater good. Perhaps she _would_ have to wrestle him into a conversation. Perhaps she’ll have to break down the door too, because when she knocks a first time, then a second, there isn’t any answer. She can’t have the wrong room—Tyrion’s instructions were quite clear. She tries again, louder this time, and finally she hears:

“Who is it?”

It’s muffled, but the irritation in his voice is clear. “It’s Brienne,” she calls back. “I need to—to speak with you.”

There’s no response for a long time, and she’s just about ready to barge into the room when Jaime opens the door.

Jaime, dripping wet, with a towel slung around his shoulders and nothing else.

He’s naked.

Again.

It’s as if they’re back at Harrenhal, and if things between them weren’t so confusing at the moment, she would ask if he finds that much joy in exposing himself to her. Instead, she slips into the room wordlessly, and watches as he wanders over to the fireplace, drying his hair as he goes.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asks.

“Only here,” she replies, backing against the door just in case he decides to make his escape.

Jaime nods, and slowly drags the towel over his body. “You’re wearing the dress,” he observes, though he’s still looking into the fire.

“I am.”

“Why?”

“It felt—” She sighs. “I’m not sure.”

He flings the towel over the back of a nearby chair, and turns towards her. “You’re not sure?” he echoes disbelievingly.

She ignores him. “Will you—get dressed? It’s important that I speak with you.”

“I think I’m fine like this, thank you.” He walks over to a table, picks up the pitcher sitting there, and pours a cup of water. She declines it when he offers it to her, so he nods and brings the cup to his lips—then takes one sip, and another, and another. He must have drained the cup by the time he asks:

“What do you want to discuss?”

She takes a deep inhale. “Alright. What is this?”

“What’s what?”

“You know perfectly well—why have you been avoiding me?”

He sets his cup down on the table. “I needed some time. To think.”

“To _think_.” She strides over to him. “Is the wedding off? Is that it?”

“That’s what you want?” he says, glaring at her as she approaches.

“What I—why would _I_ want _that_?”

“You tell me. I was under the impression that you were looking forward to marrying me.” He folds his arms, and leans against the table. “Now I find myself wondering the opposite.”

“Is _looking forward_ a necessary prerequisite for this arrangement?”

He lets out a short laugh, bitter. “This _arrangement_ ,” he repeats, as if she’d just said the most absurd thing in the world.

“What’s so funny about that?”

Jaime takes one step closer to her. “Is this all it is to you? An _arrangement_?”

“What else would it be?”

“Oh, I don’t know, how about a _marriage_?”

She can’t understand him. The marriage _is_ the arrangement; it has been from the start. “Please, explain to me how that’s different. Because I wasn’t aware they were mutually exclusive.”

He’s even closer to her now, so close she can see a water droplet flowing down a strand of his hair, then dangling precariously at the end of it. “Fine,” he says. “Let me qualify. A _loving_ marriage.”

There’s that word again. _Love_. Is that what he’s upset about? How she’d answered Shae that night? “I only told Shae the truth,” she snaps. “You’ll inherit your titles, and I—I’m someone you can trust to keep your secrets. We’re not marrying for love.”

The droplet falls.

“Really,” Jaime says, his voice pitched low. “What do you think is between us, then?”

“Between us?”

“My week on Tarth, and my letter—when I came to your room the other day—do they mean nothing to you?”

“Not— _nothing_ , just not—”

There’s a slight tug at her dress. Without glancing down, she already knows it’s Jaime, pulling the ribbon loose.

“Why did you come to me in this dress, Blue? What did you want to remind me of?”

“You—we—when we—” The words coming out hoarse, quivering. “You—want me.”

He lifts a hand to her neck, and traces his thumb over her clavicle. “How about you? Do you want me?”

His other hand reaches around her, and she feels his fingers on the buttons that run down the back of her dress.

“Do you dream of me when we’re apart?”

One button loose.

“Miss me?”

Two.

“Wish you could be with me?”

Three.

“Tell me, Brienne.” He brings his lips to her ear. “Do you want me?”

“I—of course I—” she half chokes out.

“Yes?” he asks, as her dress slips from her shoulders.

_Yes._

The word sears into her skin,

flows through her veins,

falls from her lips.

_Yes. I want you._

It’s true. Devastatingly so. It’s _yes_ to every question he asked. She dreams of this—his mouth on her lips, her neck, her breast, her cunt; yes, she will allow herself to think of that Forbidden Word, why not? She has one, doesn’t she, and Jaime’s tongue is having its way with it, _yes_ , here by the fire on the floor of his room. And _yes_ , she misses him—after Casterly Rock, and after Tarth, and in the past three days—though she’d scolded herself for doing so. _It’s only an arrangement_ , she keeps reminding herself, despite all they’ve done to prove that it isn’t _only_ that. Always, she wishes she could be with him—like this, him moving inside her—but also not like this, not _just_ like this, because there are so many other ways for them to be; because she feels the comfort of walking beside him with her arm wrapped around his and the temptation to perch her chin on his shoulder; because even conversations between them can be precious and frustrating and lovely and awkward and still so utterly exhilarating; because sometimes, in her dreams, it isn’t their bodies that they share but their words. She wants him, wants him with every fibre of her being, _yes, fuck Jaime, right there_ —

but is it love?

Does it matter?

“Jaime,” she says, as they lie entangled on the carpet after.

“Hmm.”

She shifts herself so that she’s lying atop his chest. “Does it have to be _love_?”

“What do you mean?” he asks, furrowing his brow.

“We agreed—that we would marry. For those reasons. Not because of any love between us.”

“Brienne, I—”

She silences him with a finger. “And if we—we enjoy each other’s company. That will make for a good marriage, won’t it? Better than most people can say.”

Jaime reaches up with one hand, and tucks her hair behind her ear. “You know. I think I’ve quite liked you for a rather long time.”

Skin to skin as they are, he must be able to feel the warmth of her blush now, in addition to seeing its hue. “Oh. How—how long?”

“Even before I—” He exhales. “I don’t think I would have asked you to marry me, if I didn’t like you.”

She traces a fingertip across his chest. “I suppose I wouldn’t have agreed.”

“Is it so bad that I consider that a reason? To marry you?”

“It’s not _bad_. But you can’t…” She rolls off him, onto her back. “You never said. When we discussed this. So it isn’t fair that you—you expected me to know.”

“I thought the sex would have made it pretty obvious.”

“Well. It didn’t. I thought it was just… _sex_.” She mouths the last word, though it isn’t explicitly Forbidden. More of an Unwritten Thing.

“Oh, so you can do it but you can’t say it?” Jaime turns towards her, and props his head up with one hand. “Say it, Brienne. SEX. It’s very easy.”

“Shut up.”

“Say it.”

“Sexokayhappynow?”

“Hmm. You’ll need more training.” Then, he puts his index finger on her breastbone, and drags it slowly down the length of her torso. “Anyway. It isn’t _just_ sex.”

“You never said,” she reminds him, trying to ignore how her nipples are hardening already from his touch.

“I’m telling you now.”

“After avoiding me for three days.”

“I’m sorry. I was…” He draws circles around her navel. “I think I—I fancy myself in love with you, Brienne.”

“Oh.”

His finger continues down her body. “And maybe I fancied you in love with me too.”

“Oh—well—maybe just… a little,” she concedes. She can’t help but feel all flustered by the suggestion—or perhaps it’s the fact that Jaime’s finger is moving dangerously close to the juncture of her thighs. “But not—I don’t know if I—Jaime, _stop_.”

“Sorry,” he says, without sounding sorry in the least, and reverses the direction of his finger.

“I don’t know if this is love. Yet. But… it could be.”

“Hmm. I can work with _could be_.”

“And I—no matter what, I would still be a good wife to you.”

He laughs. “You’ll be a terrible wife.”

“I wouldn’t!” she protests, smacking him in the belly with the back of her hand.

“You _would_.” His finger deviates from its path to head towards her breast. “You’d be a very distracting wife. All I’d want to do is fuck you and I won’t have time for all the very important things I have to do.”

“Then I’ll just go to—” she gasps as he brushes over her nipple— “Tarth. I’ll still have my duties.”

“I’ll follow you.”

“You won’t. You’ll be busy here, and at the Rock.”

“I refuse.” In one swift motion, he swings his leg over her, then plants his hands on either side of her head. “We travel together, always,” he says, bending down to whisper it on her lips.

Brienne reaches for his hips, guides them down so they rest on hers. For once, she finds that she likes her body built the way it is—strong enough for Jaime. “In the Grey carriage, with no badge?”

“Naturally,” he smiles. “Until there isn’t a need for Grey carriages anymore.”

She spends the rest of the night in his rooms—by the fire, on the table, in his bed. She shouldn’t stay till morning, but she doesn’t care. What will they say, if someone catches her? Send her to Lord Tywin, slap her with a merit fine, for sleeping with a man who will be her husband in three days? Let them, if they choose to—it’ll be completely ridiculous, and utterly worth it. A night with a man she might be a little bit in love with, who fancies himself in love with her too. A man whom she could love unreservedly, if given the time.

Sometime during the early morning hours, when they’re both in a contemplative mood, Jaime tells her, finally, about Aerys Targaryen. He tells her how Lord Aerys was cruel, and paranoid—increasingly so over the two years Jaime had worked for him—though no one seemed able or inclined to control him. He tells her how there were rumours Aerys sent Greys to the Green Room, forcibly and for no apparent reason, while others spoke of an obsession with Wildfire—the substance, Jaime had assumed at the time, not the swatch. He tells her how Aerys had stopped hiding his swatch cases, even peeked at them openly. Surely everyone knew of it, had seen him doing it, yet no one dared address it publicly. That is, until Jaime decided to report him to the Council for the abuse. He thought it must have been Sweetdream that Aerys was peeking at, and he’d hoped they might at least open an investigation, begin some kind of inquiry. In truth, he expected nothing to come of it at all—perhaps it’d be swept under the rug, like everything else Aerys did. That wasn’t the case. Within days, they’d declared Lord Aerys a victim of the Scale, sent him off to the Green Room, cleared his office in the Red Keep. But Jaime had found the swatch case—or one of them at least, the same one he’d shown Brienne—and kept it safe. He was sure it was the key to all that unfolded. Still, he saw what it did to Lord Aerys—the insanity, then the Green Room. So it was months before Jaime dared to take a peek, years before he dared share it with anyone else. Who knows what’s become of the Wildfire Protocol now?

“Can I tell you a secret?” Jaime asks, at the end of it.

Brienne brushes her thumb over his brow. “Always.”

“I don’t know how much I did to—to cause the situation to unfold in the way that it did. But sometimes, I feel glad that I—that my actions might have caused his death. Even if it means there’s something bigger than him, looming. I wish he’d been punished for his crimes, and not for—well, for risking the Wildfire Protocol, I suppose. But I think he deserved to die, and I even wish—I wish he didn’t get the pleasure of using the Green Room.” He closes his eyes, and sighs. “Does that make me a bad person, Blue?”

Brienne puts her hand on his cheek, lets him lean into her touch. “No,” she tells him. “It doesn’t.”

She kisses him then—on his forehead, his lips, down his chest and his belly. On impulse, she takes him in her mouth for the first time, though he tells her she doesn’t have to. She wants to help him forget. It’s the least she can do for the man whom she could love.

When they wake again, fully, the sun is already up. Aerys feels like nothing more than a dream, though Brienne knows this dream that will haunt Jaime for years to come. But at least there is peace for now. She looks over at her dress lying in a heap on the floor, illuminated by the sun, and can’t help but groan at the thought of putting it back on again just to sneak back to her room. Jaime laughs, reminds her that she’d worn it to seduce him last night—it worked—then rolls out of bed to offer her a shirt and trousers from his wardrobe. It’s not a perfect fit, but it’s close enough, and Jaime is so delighted by the sight of her in his clothes that she has to make a quick exit before he rips them off her again.

Of course, though Brienne had held out hope that she could make her way back to her room in relative peace, she doesn’t. Somehow, despite the enormity of the Lannister estate, she turns a corner to find herself face to face with the last person in the mansion that she would want to find herself face to face with.

“Interesting ensemble,” Cersei Baratheon says, without so much as a good morning. “Are those… my brother’s clothes?”

“And if they are?” Brienne retorts, half bold from her night spent with Jaime and half cranky from so little sleep.

“I suppose they suit you better. With your—” she waves her hand over Brienne— “physique.”

Brienne is sure Cersei meant it as an insult, but she only thinks of Jaime’s expression of pure glee when she’d put on his clothes. “They do,” she simply says, and attempts to move past Cersei to head back to her rooms.

“I remember you.” Cersei’s voice rings clear in the hallway, and Brienne reluctantly turns back around. “From Renly’s wedding. How you looked at him. It was almost enough to make me feel pity.”

Brienne suspects Cersei has no capacity to feel pity, but she knows better than to mention that thought. “I didn’t think you recognised me,” she says instead, coolly.

“It took me a while. But I remember now. I remember thinking you resembled a sort of…” Cersei gives her a thin-lipped smile. “A _sad cow_ , I believe was my conclusion.”

“Well,” Brienne replies, steady as she can, “it’s all in the past now.”

“Mm. You’re an ambitious one, aren’t you? First a Baratheon, then a Lannister.”

“I’m not—it’s not _ambition_. Your father arranged the match.”

“And you’re not the first. Jaime rejected all my father’s previous attempts, until you came along. What have you done to bewitch my brother, I wonder?”

“Nothing.”

Cersei narrows her eyes. “What’s your perception, again? Eighty-something percent Blue?”

“I’m not obliged to share that with you,” Brienne replies, tilting her chin a little higher.

“As the eldest, I have a vested interest in the Lannister line.”

“Last I heard, you married into House Baratheon. So it’s my children who will inherit their father’s titles, and not your son.”

For a brief moment, Brienne thinks she might earn a slap for her insolence. But Cersei only schools her features into a cool disdain. “No matter,” she smirks. “Who knows if you’ll be able bear Jaime’s children in the first place. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a cock in those trousers instead of a cunt.”

Cersei had clearly expected Brienne to be taken aback by her choice of vocabulary, but Brienne is quite immune to Forbidden Words by now. “I’m sure Jaime will be able to tell you, if you’re so curious. He’s very familiar with the answer.”

Then, she bids Cersei good morning, and walks away.

If Cersei had been offended by her response—at least, more offended than she already seemed to be by Brienne’s general existence—then Brienne has no time to care. The days leading up to the wedding are far too packed for her to entertain any of the Lannister siblings, not even the one she’s actually marrying. Anyway, while she’s unwillingly occupied by food tastings and dress fittings and other logistical concerns, Jaime is constantly being dragged off by his father for one Council-related engagement after another. The night before the wedding, Tyrion invites them out to the club once more, but Brienne is far too exhausted to go on another adventure. There’ll be plenty more chances, Jaime tells her, when he sneaks into her room that night. Even then, they’re too tired to do anything other than sleep in each other’s arms.

The ceremony takes place on the afternoon of her seventh day in King’s Landing, and she feels, strangely, not as nervous as she’d expected. Things make sense, with Jaime, even with all the instability she anticipates in their future, all the questions yet to be answered about this world they live in. So they’ll have to say a few words to make it all official, what of it? As far as she’s concerned, she took her vows at Casterly Rock, when she agreed to marry him in full colour. The Great Sept, grand and colourful as it is, is no match for the sunset she’d seen from Jaime’s room, the only true sunset she’s ever witnessed. In fact, when she really thinks about it, the Sept _disturbs_ her. She should be awestruck by its seven towering Synthetic stained-glass windows, each depicting objects and scenes corresponding to the seven colours, but it only makes her think of Tyrion’s words from a week ago: _a system of classification, so that everyone knows their place_. As the septon reads selections from The Seven-Coloured Wheel, she finds there’s an uneasiness sitting in her belly. _It’s always about what they want us to believe_ , Jaime had told her at Harrenhal. _What they want us to see._

Still, she will be married. Still, Jaime looks unreasonably handsome in his suit—dyed a Synthetic Carmine, a luxury only the wealthiest Purples could afford—and her own gown fits her as well as could be expected, though she is sure the Synthetic Ultramarine must make her pale and freckled skin look ghastly. Still, she takes heart in the look in her father’s eyes, the mixture of pride and relief, as he approaches to remove her Blue cloak from her shoulders. Still, she feels joy—real, unmitigated joy—as Jaime places the Purple cloak around her, as they pledge their love to each other with a kiss.

 _Love._ Maybe it is. One flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever.

“Do you feel any different?” Jaime whispers in her ear, as they head out of the Great Sept. “You’re Purple now. By marriage, if not by birth.”

“I’m your wife,” she replies, “and you’re my husband. That’s different enough for me.”

He kisses her then, in front of all his family, and she lets him.

That, unfortunately, will be her last taste of romance until they can retreat into their rooms for the night. There is the feast to sit through first, but while that is tedious, it can’t compare to the humiliation of the Dazzling. In front of all of their guests, they will each be shown swatches to ensure the conception of an heir—Brienne an ovulation swatch, and Jaime a virility one. The combined effect is said to increase the chance of pregnancy to ninety-five percent. Instead of the subtlety of peeking into a compact, however, the ritual requires a maester to flash the right shades into their retinas, so brightly that their guests would have to cover their eyes in the process. It is, quite literally, dazzling.

“I hate this,” Brienne mutters to Jaime, as the maester makes his preparations. “I feel so… exposed.”

“Me too,” Jaime says. “But I suppose it’s better than a bedding.”

“What’s that?”

“Tyrion says it was what they used to do, a long time ago. The newlyweds would be carried to the bed to consummate their marriage. The men would carry the bride, and the women her husband.”

“I would have had to be _carried_?”

“That’s not the worst part. Both of us would be undressed along the way—”

“ _What?_ ”

“And they would make lewd jokes and comments and suggestions.”

“That sounds horrendous.”

“It does. And besides, we don’t need suggestions.”

The maester, just within earshot, coughs right at that moment.

“At least we get to go straight to our rooms after,” Jaime adds. “I heard the Dazzling can make one feel quite… hmm, what’s the right word for it— _libidinous_.”

“More than usual?” Brienne replies, as quiet as she can, though the maester coughs again.

Jaime grins his unreasonably nice grin. “I guess we’ll find out.”

As it turns out, they _do_ feel more libidinous than usual. It’s not by much, but they still find themselves hurrying to their chambers, which are located in an entirely different wing of the Lannister mansion than her previous room, and Jaime’s. Brienne didn’t even realise this wing existed until she inspected these chambers a couple of days ago, in anticipation of it serving as their residence whenever Jaime has to be in the capital in future. It’s not exactly decorated to her tastes, but that isn’t so much of a concern when she is tumbling into bed with her husband. And the bed is very, _very_ much to her taste.

Afterwards, Jaime spends an inordinate amount of time staring at her belly, caressing it, even laying his head on it.

“This is very strange behaviour, husband,” Brienne says, running her fingers through his hair. “Will I have to call for the maester?”

“There’s a very high chance you might be carrying my child, wife. Indulge me.”

“Perhaps I was already with child before tonight. We haven’t exactly been careful.”

“Perhaps. But I’m sure of it now.”

Brienne laughs. “A few seconds ago, you said it was a _very high chance_. And now you’re sure?”

“I can feel it. I’m sure.”

“Oh, that reminds me—your sister seemed unconvinced that I’d be able to bear you any children.”

Jaime looks up at her and frowns. “My sister?”

“I met her in the hall the other morning. After our… reunion. _I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a cock in those trousers instead of a cunt_ , she said.”

He grimaces. “I’m sorry. Cersei is… bitter.”

“You don’t have to apologise for her. Besides,” Brienne makes a grimace of her own, “I _might_ have told her that she could ask you. About whether I had a cunt or not. I told her you knew the answer.”

“You did _what_?” He throws his head back and laughs. “And how did she react to that?”

She shrugs. “I walked away and didn’t look back.”

Jaime crawls up the bed so he’s face-to-face with her again. “You don’t have to say it back, but can I tell you that I love you?”

“Jaime!”

“I said you don’t have to say it back!”

“You can’t ask me for permission, and then do the thing before I’ve given you my permission.”

“Fine,” he rolls his eyes. “Anyway, while this is all very amusing—do be careful around my sister, will you?”

“Why?”

He pauses for a while, as if pondering how best to phrase his answer. “She can hold a grudge,” he explains, cautiously. “When provoked.”

“That’s it?”

“It’s not—” He huffs. “When she… perceives a threat. She doesn’t back down easily.”

Now she’s sure he’s just talking around the issue. “There’s something you’re not telling me, Jaime,” she says, pushing a finger into his chest.

“Alright,” he sighs heavily. “Well. Don’t panic, but… Tyrion and I—we think that she might have something to do with Robert’s death.”

“What?!” Brienne has the acute urge to smack Jaime in the face with a pillow. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

“Because we don’t have any _proof_. All we know is that when Robert supposedly fell ill, she’d called for the maester—a man called Qyburn. Later that day, Qyburn diagnosed Robert with the Scale, and he was sent to the Green Room. But we can’t seem to track down this maester anymore.”

“Fucking hells, Jaime.” It’s her worst Forbidden Word transgression yet, but she thinks it’s perfectly proportionate to the gravity of the situation. “You didn’t think it was important for me to know this, _before_ we got married?”

“It’s all hearsay, wife. We can’t—I won’t have my sister punished based on _hearsay_.”

“So much of what you tell me is hearsay!” She clambers out of bed, and starts pacing back and forth across the room. “Do you know _why_ she might have done it?”

“His cheating, probably—or rather, the bastards that might have been produced as a result of that cheating.”

All of a sudden, Brienne has the most chilling thought. “What if she—what would stop her from killing you, or Tyrion or—” She gestures at her belly.

“She wouldn’t,” Jaime insists, though she doesn’t find it particularly convincing. “Not family. Besides, she has Joffrey to think of.”

“And if there’s something to gain for Joffrey if you die? If she finds out about your plan to dismantle the Council? What then?”

“I—” He sighs again. “I don’t know.”

“Fuck, Jaime.” She runs a palm over her hair. “Did she have something to do with Renly’s death too?”

“Renly?” He sits up in the bed. “Why are you bringing up Renly?”

“He—well, he—”

Realisation dawns on Jaime’s face. “He’s the Blue-leaning Purple. _Your_ Blue-leaning Purple.”

“I—I thought you knew that already,” Brienne stammers. “I thought you’d guessed, from the way I’d acted the other night—with Loras Tyrell—”

“I was _distracted_ , as you might recall,” Jaime says, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

“Okay—fine. Yes. Renly was a—I had a, a crush. Okay?”

“You seemed very affected by this _crush_.”

“ _Jaime_ —it was nothing.” It _was_. She doesn’t know now how she could have thought herself in love with Renly. “I was just—a few years ago, he visited Tarth and, he was kind to me and I—we barely even spoke—”

“Alright. Fine. It doesn’t matter but—you should know that Cersei wasn’t the one who had Renly killed.”

“What? How would you… Y-you know who it was?”

Jaime stands, and comes towards her.

“If the drunken ramblings of Loras Tyrell are to be believed, then yes. It was Stannis Baratheon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Except it’s not a surprise because we already knew that from canon.
> 
> There’s a small chance I’ll have to delay Chapter 7 by one day. I’m trying to figure out how to wrap things up in a satisfying way despite the fact that I have way too many unresolved plot lines – more on this in my notes tomorrow. Sorry (not sorry) I spent too much of this story on Jaime and Brienne banging.


	7. Grey Areas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I have a very different definition of ‘wrapping things up’ than you might have assumed.

Brienne was not expecting to spend her wedding night knee deep in the conspiracies of the Seven Kingdoms. Then again, considering the circumstances of her betrothal, perhaps this is exactly how she should have expected to spend her wedding night.

“This is bullshit, Jaime,” she says, as he comes out of the bathroom with two robes in his arms.

“I know.”

“It’s fucking bullshit.”

“I know,” he repeats, handing one robe to her.

“How—how are you so calm about this?”

“It’s not calm,” Jaime replies, as he puts one arm through his robe, then the other. “It’s—well, resignation, I suppose. I’ve spent the past… almost ten years coming to terms with all that happened with Aerys Targaryen. I’m hardly surprised anymore by the actions of people in power. Or people who want more of it.”

“What happened to Lord Aerys—that was one thing.” She wraps the robe around herself. “But you’re telling me that Purples can go around conveniently arranging murders because they can just say it’s the Scale and be done with it?”

“I’m sure it isn’t just Purples that do it,” Jaime says, walking towards the hearth. “But they do have more at stake, and are more likely to have the resources to pull it off. Technically, all you need to do is convince a maester to make that diagnosis, and boom, they’re sent to the Green Room. When you’re dead, they cart your body off to the icehouse. _Supposedly_ to prevent the spread of the Scale when your corpse becomes infectious after death.”

“Maesters are supposed to be healers, not—”

“Healers want things too. And if you can give them what they want…”

She collapses into an armchair. “There has to be something we can do. Expose them, _something_.”

“Like I said, we can’t prove anything unless the maesters themselves come forward—which they won’t—and even then, all we have is their word.”

“You really can’t find this—this Qyburn?”

He shakes his head. 

“How about Loras Tyrell? What did he say?”

“I haven’t actually spoken to him—not personally, anyway. Like I told you when we first met, I don’t spend much time in King’s Landing. Well, not until recently.”

“We should speak to him. Maybe he has proof of his own.”

“And what happens if he does? We overthrow Stannis, install some minor Baratheon cousin in his place?”

“Couldn’t you? Isn’t that what you want—to have more of the Council on your side?”

Jaime heaves a sigh. “I suppose we could try. I’ll speak with Tyrion. We’ll have to catch Loras when he’s at the club again, and hopefully sober.”

“Alright.” Brienne sinks deeper into her seat, and rubs her face with her hands. Forget how she expected her wedding night to go—this isn’t how she expected her _life_ to go.

“Hey—” Jaime comes up to her, and kneels down beside her. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I said you didn’t have to get involved, and—”

“It’s not your fault,” she says, and lets her finger brush along the curve of his ear. “I’m making a choice.”

He adjusts himself so he’s sitting at her feet. “You could have led a quiet life on Tarth, Blue. Without any of this.”

“I could have. But—” She bites her lip, wondering if she should say… _Fuck it_. “But it would have been without you.”

He breaks into a smile, and puts his head in her lap. “That sounds suspiciously like a declaration of—”

“Say that next word and I will not let you into our bed for the rest of the night.”

“As we well know,” he says, running a finger along her arm, “the bed isn’t the only option for our… activities.”

It isn’t—and she does know that very well. She knows it even better by the next morning, even if she can’t help but feel guilty for indulging in such pleasure. She has to remind herself that there’s nothing they could have done the night before, about Cersei, and Robert, and Stannis, and Renly. There might not even be anything they can do in the future. Still, it feels wrong, to enjoy Jaime like this. 

Still, it feels right.

It’s a few more days before they have the opportunity to go to the club again, and on a day when they’ll be able to intercept Loras, too. In the meantime, her father returns to Tarth—she embraces him for a long while on the platform at King’s Landing Station—and it’s the first time she’ll be apart from him for more than a few weeks. _You could have led a quiet life on Tarth, Blue._ She could have. A quiet, less colourful life. A life without Jaime.

When they finally make it to the club, she and Jaime sit at the bar rather than the booth as they await Loras Tyrell’s arrival. Their bartender is a jovial, if slightly incompetent fellow with a moon-shaped face and an even rounder body. He introduces himself as Sam, and despite his clumsiness, succeeds in pouring them a couple of mugs of beer. Sam attempts to engage them in small talk, but Brienne feels far too nervous to absorb anything more than the fact that he’s new here, and has a wife and a newborn son. Her mind is filled only with Loras Tyrell.

A few moments later, she feels Jaime nudge her in the side. “He’s here,” he whispers, lifting his chin to the man walking towards the bar. “Loras,” he calls out, and waves him over. “Join us.”

“Jaime Lannister,” Loras says, stopping a distance from them. “Why would I want to have a drink with you? And—” He meets Brienne’s eyes, and knits his brow. “You look familiar. Have we met?”

“This is my wife, Brienne Tarth,” Jaime answers for her.

“Not Brienne Lannister?” Loras asks. 

“No. She is the future Evenstar of Tarth, so she will keep her name.”

“I was at your sister’s wedding,” Brienne explains. “Representing Tarth. Perhaps that’s how you recognise me.”

Loras’s face darkens, and he takes his seat, leaving one vacant between him and Brienne. “I see.”

“We want to ask you something, Loras.” Jaime stands from his barstool, grabs his mug, and moves to fill the empty seat between Loras and Brienne. “We want to know about Renly Baratheon.”

The other man stiffens. “He’s dead. What else is there to know?”

“By Stannis’s hand, so you say.”

“Not his hand, though it was his doing. No one murders anymore, right?” Loras signals for Sam to bring him a beer too. “But what’s it to you?”

“We want to know,” Brienne jumps in. “If you had any evidence. We want to—we’re hoping that there’s something we could do, about such incidents.”

“Evidence?” Loras scoffs. “Unless you can get that witch Melisandre to talk, you won’t find any evidence.”

“Melisandre?” Jaime asks. “That’s his… maester?”

“That’s what he wants people to believe.” Sam sets a mug down on the counter, and Loras picks it up to take a long swig of his beer. “She’s his _advisor_ ,” he adds eventually, coating the word with contempt. “And a bloody Red Priestess.”

“A Red Priestess?” Brienne says in surprise. “From Essos?” She’d heard, vaguely, of the religion of R’hllor, also known as the Red God. It’s the Chromatic Hierarchy completely inverted—Reds at the top instead of just above the Greys. But Stannis is a _Purple_. “Why would Stannis have a Red Priestess as an advisor?”

“She thinks he’s some kind of messiah.” Loras lets out an acidic laugh. “ _Stannis_. A messiah.”

“Fuck.” Jaime slams his mug down on the counter, and turns to Brienne. “Father implied that Stannis was pushing for more autonomy,” he says, under his breath.

“With the Council?” she whispers back.

Jaime nods. “For the Stormlands, he claims. Perhaps he wants more than that. I doubt he’ll get what he wants, but it makes things… more complicated.”

“I don’t know how Stannis got Renly to see his witch,” Loras says, and they turn their attention back to him. “But he did. Then she said he had the Scale, and—that was that. He _wasn’t sick_. I saw him that morning and—”

He laughs, sadly now, then lifts the mug to his lips and takes another long drink of it. He just looks so _dismal_ —so dismal that Brienne feels the urge to reach across the counter and hold his hand. She doesn’t, though, because just then, someone says:

“I don’t mean to interrupt, but—”

All three of them look up towards the voice. It’s Sam, who leans in as close as he can from behind the counter, and says: “You’ve got it all wrong. With the Scale.”

“How would you know that?” Jaime asks, leaning forward too.

“I was—I never finished, but I was studying to become a maester.”

“Were you really?” Jaime folds his arms on the counter. “And what exactly did we get wrong about the Scale?”

Sam looks to one side, then the other, as if to make sure there are no eavesdroppers. Then he drops his voice even further and says: “You didn’t hear this from me, but—nobody gets sick from the Scale.”

“Yes, we know,” Loras replies, with some annoyance. “They’re sent to the Green Room before they can—”

“No, I mean—” Sam huffs. “Greyscale used to be a disease, years and years ago. It would affect children in damp climates, mostly, and leave the afflicted flesh cracked and grey and stone-like. A grey scale would literally develop on your skin, but you wouldn’t die from it. Unless, of course, it affected your internal organs, or if you contracted its more lethal cousin, the Grey Plague—”

“Sam,” Jaime interjects, “what do you mean, it _used to be a disease_?”

“I mean,” Sam wipes his brow, “the Scale we know today, isn’t a disease you can just contract. It’s a _colour_.”

“A _colour_?” Brienne exclaims, too loud, and has to look around to make sure no one noticed. “Like a swatch?” she whispers.

Sam nods. “There’s a list of symptoms that all maesters are given. If our patients exhibit any of those symptoms, we’re supposed to show them the Greyscale swatch, and then it’s on to the Green Room. It used to be optional—the patient could choose to enter the Green Room, a sort of, of voluntary euthanasia. Now,” he winces, “it might not be so voluntary.”

“So Renly did have the Scale, in a sense,” Brienne thinks out loud, “but he was given it _intentionally_. He was shown the swatch.”

“That’s a possibility. And there’s something else.” Sam wrings his hands nervously. “The symptoms—there are addenda.”

Brienne doesn’t like the sound of _addenda_ , and Jaime and Loras mustn’t either, because they both say, “Addenda?”

“Symptoms that aren’t so… physiological, and more… behavioural. Less… normative, and more… deviant.”

“Deviant how?” Loras demands, in a harsh whisper.

Sam gives him a sombre look. “Anything they deem—irreversibly _un-Chromatic_.”

“Shit,” Jaime says. “ _Shit_. How the _fuck_ didn’t we know this before? That’s why you can get the Scale at any age. It’s just another way to control us—how they want us to act.”

 _Another way to control us_ , Brienne thinks. Like the rules in The Wheel, and the merit system, and—well, and the Colour Perception Test itself. The Hierarchy. But maesters? They’re _healers_ , not _murderers_ —right?

“All—all maesters—they all do this?” she stammers. 

“Not all,” Sam assures her. “And the majority of maesters really do focus on healing. Most make a point of never using the swatch, if they can help it. But it gives them too much power, you see? It’s part of the reason why I gave up on it.”

“Is there a way for us to see this list?” Jaime asks. “Make it public?”

Sam brings his hand to his jaw, and rubs it as he thinks. “You’d probably have to go to the Citadel in Oldtown for that. And even then, I’m not sure how you’d be able to get your hands on it. The actual list is closely guarded, and maesters have to commit it to memory. I never even got around to doing that.”

“Can’t a maester just come forward and reveal it?” Brienne asks.

“It’s still hearsay. It’s too easy for that to be refuted.” Jaime puts his head in his hands, then lifts it back up again. “But the list—it’s something. At least it _exists_. It’s evidence.” He gets off the barstool, and places his hand on Brienne’s arm. “We have to talk to Tyrion.”

They give Loras and Sam their thanks, and abandon their unfinished beers to head back to the Lannister residence. Just before they leave, Brienne has a sudden thought. She turns back to the bar, to where Sam still stands, looking slightly shaken by everything. 

“Hey,” she asks, “do you know anything about something called Wildfire?”

“Like the substance?” he asks, looking at her cluelessly.

Well, she tried. He doesn’t seem to have any idea about the Wildfire Protocol. “Never mind. Thanks again, Sam. You’ve been really helpful.”

Back they go again, through the servants’ quarters and the tunnel and up the ladder, but it doesn’t take them the whole way back to the Lannister residence to meet with Tyrion again. In fact, when they push aside the back panel of the wardrobe, he’s sitting on the bed waiting for them.

“Tyrion?” Jaime says, climbing through the wardrobe. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you weren’t—”

“We have a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” Brienne asks, as she exits the wardrobe too.

Tyrion eases himself off the bed. “I received an urgent message from Chataya. Two young girls just showed up here this evening. They won’t say who they are, only that they need protection.” 

“That’s… worrying.” Jaime replaces the back panel, and closes the wardrobe doors. “But why does it concern us _specifically_?”

“Well, brother, all they have to identify themselves is a silver direwolf brooch.”

“ _What?_ ”

Brienne frowns. “What does that mean?”

“If it isn’t fake,” Tyrion replies, “it means they might have some relation to House Stark.”

“What—the _Fallen House_?” 

The fall of House Stark is the only blip in the recent history of the Seven Kingdoms—or at least, the only blip that is publicly known. House Stark had presided as Wardens in the North since before the inception of the Chromatic Hierarchy, and continued to do so up until about a decade ago, when they were pushed out of Winterfell and replaced by House Bolton. If Brienne remembers correctly, the official story proclaimed that House Stark’s Purple perception had become too diluted to be considered noble anymore. But she knows better now than to trust the official story—especially when alleged Stark descendants are showing up in King’s Landing requesting protection at Chataya’s.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Jaime puts his hand to his forehead, and grasps his hair with his fingers. “Alright. Where are they now?”

Tyrion waves them towards the door. “Downstairs, in the cellar.”

“Wait,” Brienne stops him. “Tyrion, we learned something important tonight.” 

As quickly and quietly as they can, they run him through all they learned from Loras and Sam.

“Fucking hells,” Tyrion exhales once they’re done. “The Scale is a _swatch_?”

Jaime nods. “If we can find some way to get our hands on that list, we might be able to gain some leverage.”

“That’s probably true, but we’ll have to come up with a proper strategy. I doubt we’re going to be able to wander into the Citadel and say, _excuse me, could you hand over the evidence that you’re summarily culling the entire population of the Seven Kingdoms?_ ” 

“Maybe Loras or his siblings will be able to help,” Brienne suggests. “Oldtown is part of the Reach after all, and ruled by House Tyrell.”

“Maybe, though the Citadel operates with a great deal of independence. Not to mention secrecy. We’ll have to tread lightly.” Tyrion pinches his brow. “Alright. Let’s just deal with the situation downstairs first, and then we can see about breaking into the thrice-damned Citadel.”

They make their way down to the common room, then through the kitchens, where there’s a trapdoor leading down to a cellar. There, they find two girls waiting: the taller one, with long hair and ice blue eyes, must only be thirteen or so, while the shorter one, who can’t be more than ten, has grey eyes—as far as Brienne can tell—and darker hair down only to her chin. Both are wrapped in hooded cloaks with Grey badges fastened to them, and wear simple clothes underneath—the taller in a long plain dress, and the shorter in a tunic and trousers a little frayed at the cuffs. While the former carries herself with a ladylike grace, Brienne might have mistaken the latter for a boy if she hadn’t been told otherwise. The two girls have one thing in common, though—despite their obvious fatigue, there’s a flash of defiance and wariness in their eyes, far more than should be expected of such young girls. 

“Well,” Jaime speaks first, “even if I hadn’t known about the brooch, this one definitely looks like Catelyn Tully.” He gestures to the taller of the two. “Though I haven’t seen the woman since her wedding to Eddard Stark. She has the red hair to match, at least, and the eyes.”

There’s a brief flash of panic in the girl, as if she hadn’t expected to be recognised.

“Are you their daughter?” Jaime asks. “Forgive me—if you are who I think you are, then I only remember that your name started with—”

“She goes by Alayne,” the younger girl snaps, and puts her hand on something at her hip—the hilt of a small dagger, Brienne realises.

“That one definitely looks like a Stark,” Jaime comments, unbothered by the girl’s aggression. “Acts like one, too.”

The one called Alayne extends an arm in front of the other. “I apologise for my sister’s rudeness,” she says, and it’s clear from her voice and diction that she’s of noble birth, despite the Grey badge on her cloak. “I’m Alayne, and this is Nymeria. We were told that if we ever ended up in King’s Landing, we could come to Chataya’s for our protection.”

“Protection?” Jaime asks. “From what?”

“Hold on,” Brienne interrupts. She walks towards the girls and holds out her hand. “I’m Brienne Tarth. This is my husband Jaime Lannister, and his brother Tyrion.”

“Lannisters?” Nymeria says in alarm, staring up at Alayne. “This is a trap!”

Neither girl takes Brienne’s outstretched hand, so she lets it fall.

“We don’t even know why you’re here,” Jaime says, “or what to trap you for.”

“We have this.” Alayne reaches into her pocket, and produces the silver direwolf brooch. “We were told we could get help here if we showed this sigil.”

Tyrion takes a couple steps towards her, and observes the brooch in her palm. “Certainly looks real enough.”

“That’s all we have,” Alayne says. “Still, we hope you can help us. Keep us safe.”

“Where are your parents?” Brienne asks, gently. “The rest of your family?”

“We—we don’t know.” Nymeria wipes one hand across her eyes. “We were separated. We got on a train and found ourselves in King’s Landing and—”

“And you’ve been told that you could come here,” Tyrion says. “To Chataya’s.”

“We were told that there were people here who would be on our side,” Alayne explains. “We thought we’d find more of—” and then she stops.

“Of?” Brienne encourages, but Alayne doesn’t open her mouth again.

“This is a mistake,” Nymeria whispers to her sister. “They can’t help us. They don’t even know anything.”

“Hold on.” Brienne stoops down so that she’s more of a height with them. “What do you need? A place to stay?”

“To start.” Alayne stands a little taller. “And not—with Lannisters.”

“What exactly do you have against Lannisters?” Jaime asks.

“We don’t trust any of the Great Houses,” Nymeria says, with a sort of snarl that strikes Brienne as wolf-like. “We don’t trust Purples.”

“Alright.” Brienne holds her palms up. “I’m a Blue. I know that might not be much better, but I swear, whatever it is, we’ll help you.” She looks back to Jaime and Tyrion. “Is there anywhere they can stay for a few days? Anywhere besides with your family?”

“Shae’s,” Tyrion volunteers. “It’s not far from here. But we can’t keep them there forever.”

Jaime nods. “Until we find out more, then.”

Brienne turns back to the girls. “Will you come with us?”

Alayne and Nymeria share a tentative look. Then, Alayne nods, and takes her sister’s hand.

They shepherd the girls swiftly over to Shae’s, a two-storey house not a far walk from Chataya’s. Shae is understandably surprised by the appearance of two young Greys on her doorstep—there is no more mention of Starks once they step out of Chataya’s—but she is welcoming, and offers to put the girls up in a spare room. While she’s in the kitchen throwing together a hot meal to fill Alayne and Nymeria’s stomachs, Brienne tries to coax the girls into sharing more. They remain withdrawn, however, and say little about their family or how they ended up alone in King’s Landing. Not willing to spook them further, Tyrion decides to head back to the club to see if he can make some discreet enquiries, and the girls retreat upstairs to their room once they’ve finished their meal.

“Do you know anything about the Starks?” Brienne asks Jaime quietly, as they sit together in a corner of Shae’s living room. “Besides the official story.”

“Only that they were displaced, and it was messy. I suspect they were removed for voicing some… dissenting opinions. Against the Hierarchy.”

“I never heard about that,” she murmurs. It’s a pointless statement—she’d never heard about a lot of things before Jaime. 

“We’re not the first to try to change things,” Jaime replies, “though I’m not sure what exactly the Starks’ objectives were. All I know is, once Lord Rickard passed, the Council had his children redo their Tests. It was announced that they hadn’t tested Purple enough after all, and House Stark lost Winterfell to the Boltons pretty quickly.”

“They can do that? Tamper with the results of the Test?” 

“I suppose they can, when it’s in their interest to do so.”

Of all things, Brienne hadn’t thought the Test could be manipulated. It’s supposed to be incorruptible, unassailable—after all, it determines the entire social order of the Seven Kingdoms—and she wonders why the Council would risk threatening the Test’s authority when it’s clear they have other methods at their disposal. “We know they could have used the Green Room if they wanted to. Why didn’t they just send them there if they wanted to get rid of them?”

“Too risky, perhaps, to kill all of them at once. The Council needed to destroy the Starks’ legitimacy, not make them martyrs.”

“But the girls were wearing Grey badges,” Brienne says, remembering the circles pinned to their cloaks. “Which means their parents have to identify as Greys, if they’re still alive. They couldn’t have been downgraded to Greys, could they?”

“That’s been bothering me too. And if their mother is who I think she is, then surely they could have taken shelter with House Tully. They still hold Riverrun.”

“Something is clearly going on, Jaime. This isn’t just a matter of two lost children.”

Jaime sighs, and tilts his head to the ceiling. “I’ve heard rumblings before, in my travels in the North. Of some kind of resistance effort.” He looks back at Brienne again. “I wonder if that’s what the girls were expecting to find at Chataya’s.”

“The splinter group here has nothing to do with that?”

“Perhaps there are sympathisers in the know, but we’ve mostly been trying to keep things as legitimate as possible. Working to change the system from the inside, so to speak.” Jaime combs his fingers through his hair. “I never thought I’d say the name Rickard Stark again. It’s been so many years.”

“Hey—” Brienne touches his arm— “Was this… did it happen around the time Aerys—”

His eyes widen. “Yes. I think it was a few months before, but yes. About the same time. Are you thinking—”

“The Wildfire?”

Jaime nods thoughtfully. “Perhaps they were connected.”

Brienne lets out a long breath, and allows her eyelids to drift closed for a moment. They’ve had far too many revelations and hypotheses for one night, and she feels exhausted by all of it.

“Tired?” Jaime says, sweeping her hair away from her brow.

She opens her eyes, and nods.

“I suppose this isn’t much of a honeymoon, is it?”

Despite everything, she allows herself a soft laugh. They’d wanted to return to Tarth at least, or maybe even travel to Dorne or beyond for a week or two, but it appears they’ll have to stay in King’s Landing for a while longer.

Jaime smiles, a small one, and she can see in his face that he’s exhausted too. “Come,” he says. “Let’s go home. We can talk to Tyrion tomorrow, and maybe the girls will be less tight-lipped after some rest.”

So they give Shae their thanks and bid her good night, and proceed back to the Lannister residence. _Tomorrow_ , Brienne thinks. Given all that had happened in one night—all they’d learned—what will tomorrow bring?

The answer is: _more_. And it isn’t Tyrion, or Alayne, or Nymeria who reveals the next crucial piece of information. 

“House Tully has fallen,” Lord Tywin announces calmly at breakfast in the morning, before they’ve even had a chance to confer with Tyrion. “It won’t be in the papers yet, so I expect your discretion on the matter.”

Brienne, Jaime, and Tyrion meet each others’ eyes, all unable to decide how to respond. It had been a decade since a Great House had last fallen—an event that didn’t occur with much frequency—and two members of that Great House had appeared just the night before.

“Really?” Cersei asks. Unruffled, she takes a sip of her tea. “Which house will replace them?”

“Negotiations will take place over the next few weeks,” Lord Tywin replies. “Jaime, you will join me where possible.”

“Yes, Father.” Jaime says. Then, carefully: “This… is a sudden development.”

“It is,” Lord Tywin says, putting his fingertips together. “But we will weather this crisis, as we have weathered the ones before.”

Jaime glances at Brienne again, before venturing to ask: “How did this happen?”

Coolly, Lord Tywin reaches for his toast, and takes a bite of it. When he swallows, he says, “Lord Hoster has passed, and his son Edmure is… indisposed.”

“And Edmure’s uncle? Is Lord Brynden also indisposed?”

They wait for an answer, but Lord Tywin doesn’t give one. “There will be a new Lord Paramount of the Trident,” he says instead, with finality. “And it will not be a Tully.”

After that pronouncement, there is little else to be discussed at breakfast, and they continue the rest of the meal in silence. It’s not till the afternoon that Brienne, Jaime, and Tyrion are able to meet privately in Tyrion’s chambers.

“Did you hear about this at the club?” Jaime asks. “About House Tully?”

“Only that there might be trouble at Riverrun,” Tyrion says. “I didn’t think it would be this bad. The resistance from the North—”

“I suspected,” Jaime sighs. “The Starks must be involved, then.”

Tyrion nods. “There isn’t a lot of reliable information. I may need to make a trip to make contact with the resistance, or whatever exists of it, find out what they want and how they intend to achieve it.” 

“Do you know who you can meet with?”

“Not yet. But someone mentioned that I might have some luck with a group called the Brotherhood Without Banners.”

“Sounds familiar,” Jaime says. “I’ll give you the names of some people who might be able to point you in the right direction.”

“Will it be safe?” asks Brienne. “There’s so much we don’t know.”

Jaime folds his arms, and traces one hand across his jaw. “She’s right. I don’t even know how much I’ll be able to get out of Father about the situation with House Tully.”

“I’ll bring company, if I go.” Tyrion walks over to a chair, and settles himself into it. “But we can’t keep Alayne and Nymeria here for long, especially if they are truly Rickard Stark’s granddaughters. King’s Landing won’t be a safe place for them to be if they’re at all involved in the resistance.”

“They’re so young,” Brienne murmurs, thinking of Nymeria’s dagger. “I can’t believe they’d be entangled in all of this.” 

“They may not have had a choice,” Jaime says. “But we won’t know until they tell us.”

“And we may not be able to wait until they’re feeling more forthcoming,” Tyrion points out. “Who knows how long it’ll take to gain their trust, if they’re so averse to Lannisters.”

Before Brienne has a chance to think it through, the word “Tarth” tumbles out of her.

Both Lannister brothers turn to look at her. “You mean to bring them to Tarth?” Jaime says.

She nods. “It should be easy enough to hide them there. I’m not sure I want my father to be dragged into all of this before we know what we’re getting into, but as far as anyone besides the three of us knows, they’re just two Grey orphans.”

“Alright,” Jaime agrees. “I’ll have to see what Father wants of me these next few days, but I can—”

“I’ll bring them myself,” Brienne says. “We’ll get the train first thing tomorrow.”

“No.” Jaime takes her by the hand, grasps it tight. “We travel together, always—remember?”

“Father will be suspicious if you leave now,” Tyrion reminds him. “He wants you around for the negotiations. And there’s the matter of the Citadel, if we’re still pursuing that.”

Brienne watches as Jaime’s face twists into a grimace. “I’ll be gone for a few days, Jaime,” she assures him. “A week at most, or two. We’ll tell your father I have matters to attend to back on the island. You won’t even miss me.”

“I’ll miss you,” he insists, and her cheeks warm.

“This is all very sweet,” Tyrion says, with a sly grin, “but perhaps we should all start making the preparations for our respective plans.”

It all happens so quickly. Brienne has her leather suitcase packed within the hour, while Jaime informs Lord Tywin of her impending departure, and Tyrion sends a message to Shae to have the girls packed and ready tomorrow morning. It all happens so quickly that Brienne hardly knows what to do with herself for the rest of the evening. 

Jaime, of course, has the solution for that.

“I’m missing you already,” he tells her in bed. “Promise you’ll send me letters. Of your dreams.”

“I’ll only be gone for a few days, Jaime,” she laughs. “We’ve been apart for longer.”

“Not since we’ve been married. Not since…” He reaches down to place his hand over her belly.

“We’re still not sure—”

“I’m sure.”

She sighs, tenderly. There’s no use arguing with him now—she’ll see the maester once she’s back. “Alright. I’ll send you _one_ letter.”

“It has to be ten pages long.”

“ _Ten pages?_ ”

“Detail, Blue. Explicit detail.” He touches a finger to her nose. “And I’ll send you two letters for every day you’re gone.”

She laughs again. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”

“It’s only because I love you,” he says, without hesitation.

Brienne knows Jaime doesn’t expect a response. Still, she smiles, wide, and only realises a few seconds later that she’s showing him all of her teeth. A few seconds after that, she realises she doesn’t care. She would have, three moons ago, or two, or even one—she would have cared that she was showing her crooked teeth to an unreasonably handsome man with an unreasonably nice grin. But she won’t shield her mouth now. She will kiss Jaime with it, and make him promises of ten-page letters, and kiss him again.

They leave early the next morning in one of his family’s cars—Jaime deftly waves off his flustered chauffeur—and head to Shae’s to pick up Alayne and Nymeria. The girls seem slightly less tired than when they last saw them two nights ago, and slightly less guarded, but not by much. Nonetheless, they thank Shae for her hospitality, even giving her a hug, before bundling themselves into the backseat.

“Where are we going?” Nymeria asks, as Jaime starts the car.

“I’m bringing you to my island,” Brienne answers. “To Tarth. We’ll have to take a train to Storm’s End, then board a ship from there.”

“You have a whole island?” Nymeria says in wonderment, and Brienne nods.

“Tarth,” murmurs Alayne. “That’s the Sapphire Isle, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

Then, she says something under her breath. Something that sounds an awful lot like, _wish we could still see blue._

Brienne looks over her shoulder to the backseat. “Did you say… _still_ see Blue?”

“Oh!” Alayne clears her throat. “No—I—you must have heard wrong.” And then she deflects with, “I’m sure it’s beautiful on Tarth. Even for a Grey.”

Brienne faces forwards again, and shares a look with Jaime out of the corner of her eye. She has an ever-increasing list of questions that she would like to ask these two mysterious girls who might be Rickard Stark’s granddaughters, though she doubts they will answer her truthfully right now. Perhaps on Tarth, away from the city, she’ll have better luck.

King’s Landing Station is busy, even so early in the morning. Alayne and Nymeria purchase their Grey tickets with the merits Jaime had provided, while Brienne buys her Chroma ticket from the attendant a few windows over. They’ll keep a safe distance from each other, at least for the time being, though Brienne will sit as close to the Grey carriages as she can. She wouldn’t have minded sitting with the girls, but there isn’t a point in drawing attention to themselves if they don’t have to. A Blue sitting in a Grey carriage. She would never have intrigued an unreasonably handsome man if she hadn’t done that.

Once the girls have safely boarded the train, Brienne turns to Jaime, and kisses him on the cheek just as he’d done when he’d departed Tarth. “I look forward to seeing you again,” she whispers in his ear, though it isn’t half as suggestive as how he’d said it that day.

“Is that all?” Jaime whispers back.

She brings her arms around his waist. “I’ll write.”

“And?”

“I’ll dream of you.”

“And?”

She brings her lips as close to his ear as she can. 

“… I love you.”

When he leans back, he looks so pleased that Brienne thinks she might cry. “Check your pocket,” he says.

She reaches into the pocket of her blazer, and her hand closes around a circular object. Without removing it, she already knows there’s a dragon carved into its cover, and small jewels where its eyes should be. 

“ _Jaime_ ,” she scolds, even as she thinks of radiant sunsets and sapphire seas and bodies moving together in the grass. “Why did you—”

“Keep it. It would please your husband if you do.”

“I’m only going for a _week_. And I won’t look at it without you.”

Jaime brings a hand to her lapel, and runs his fingers down it. “Keep it forever. Or until we find out the truth.”

“But—”

“If there’s anyone in the world I would trust with it, it’s you.”

She loosens her grip on the compact, and brings her hand out of her pocket to hook her fingers around Jaime’s. “Keeper of your secrets?”

He smiles, and kisses her—on the lips, this time, and deep. “You know what else you are, Blue?” he asks, when he finally pulls away. 

“What?”

“Brave, and just, and defender of the innocent.”

Brienne blushes, and looks at her feet. “I’m only bringing two girls to an island,” she mumbles. “I’m no knight.”

Jaime tips her chin up with a finger. “I say you are, so you are.”

“Are you implying that you’re a knight too?” she laughs. “That’s how it works, right?”

“And if I am?”

She cups his face with her hands, and kisses him again.

“Then I come back to you, and we fight the monsters together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TO BE CONTINUED. Maybe.
> 
> Yes, I know, I’m evil. Why did I write this whole story only to leave so many loose threads? Well, part of the reason is, the novel I based this on was supposed to be a trilogy, and I’ve been waiting more than ten years for the second book, and have no idea how some of its conspiracies resolve (I’m so sorry I forgot to warn those of you who bought the book!). I tend to work best when I have other canons to riff off of, even if I deviate from them, so on a deadline I needed to figure out what I could pull off. Still, the novel manages to end on a compelling note, even while having many loose threads of its own, and I reasoned that it would be better to take a leaf out of that literal book and create a jumping-off point for a future installment in the series.
> 
> I can’t promise I’ll get to a sequel anytime soon, because real life beckons, but perhaps one day I’ll write another seven-chapter story or two, or hell, expand the whole thing into a proper longfic. In the meantime, I thought a good conclusion for this fic would be to have Brienne devote herself more fully to the work of dismantling the Chromatic Hierarchy—and taking ownership of it apart from Jaime—as well as nodding to canon by introducing the Starks.
> 
> CapturedMoon: I know you wanted a happy ending, and this story ends with Jaime and Brienne separating. I promise this is only a temporary separation and there *will* be sexy letters in between. (I’m not saying I’ll write an epistolary interlude in which Brienne figures out how to sext via raven, but never say never.) Hope you enjoyed this story regardless, which I wouldn’t have written if you hadn’t given me that wonderful prompt!
> 
> Thanks to everyone who read, commented, and left kudos – I’m grateful that you took a chance on this strange premise. When my identity is revealed, perhaps I’ll post some teasers for the rest of the story, and/or my headcanons for the expanded version I would have written if I had the time!
> 
> Edit: [I've posted some notes on my Tumblr](https://shipping-receiving.tumblr.com/post/627347266550874112/trivia-tuesday-some-notes-on-full-spectrum-im)!

**Author's Note:**

> My betas know I owe them everything.


End file.
